Story, Jerry

ORAL HISTORY OF JERRY STORY
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 27, 2013
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 27th, 2013. I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Jerry Story, 108 Aspen Lane, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take his oral history about growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Jerry, please state your full name, place of birth and date.
MR. STORY: Okay. My name is Jerry Brooks Story. I got the name Brooks from my great, great uncle Sam Brooks. My birth date is 1940, Paducah, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Give me your father’s name and place of birth and date, if you recall.
MR. STORY: Okay. My father’s name is Willard Griffin Story. His nickname was Bobby and he was born in Paducah, Kentucky, on a farm between Paducah and the Kentucky Dam in 1909.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother’s name, maiden name and place of birth and date.
MR. STORY: Mary Lynn Story, 1913, in Paducah, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her maiden name?
MR. STORY: Mary Lynn Alexander.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your grandparents’ names and birth dates on your father’s side?
MR. STORY: Okay, on my father’s side? My grandfather come from England in 1886 and he brought his sister, which is my great aunt and they lived in Paducah on a farm and they had 13 children, 10 brothers and three sisters. The Story farm is still there and there was a lot of memories growing up and going back to Paducah to see the farm and work the farm because they raise––he raised strawberries, my granddaddy did, tobacco, soy beans and hogs for a living for the 13 kids that he raised on that farm.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s side of the family?
MR. STORY: My mother’s side was Alexander. My granddaddy he came from England too and my grandmother. Her name was Murt. Back then, that name sounds funny, but back then that’s the way the names really were. Murt Alexander and we used to care about that and they lived on a farm for several years, but they finally got old enough where they couldn’t manage the farm, so they sold the farm and moved to Paducah and she had two sisters and one brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the reason why both of those families ended up in Paducah, Kentucky?
MR. STORY: No, I really don’t. I sure don’t because as you know when you meet somebody and marry them, it’s a mystery because you don’t know where their historical people came from or what their lives were.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father? Where did he meet your mother?
MR. STORY: My father met my mother at a basketball game. She played basketball in Sharp, Kentucky, and that was about two miles from Little Cypress from my granddaddy’s house. They dated for a while and they finally got married and had three children in Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history? What grades did he complete?
MR. STORY: Father went to a one room schoolhouse, grades kindergarten through 12th and he was a very intelligent person. He knew every date of the presidents of the United States. He could sit down and tell you what they done, how they done it. He was very educated. He was a smart person.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s history?
MR. STORY: On my mother’s side, she was very smart too and she made A’s in school. In her senior year, back then, they made a special trip to Denver, Colorado and that’s a long ways back then in cars that wouldn’t go very fast and dirt roads, a few paved roads, gravel roads.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have sisters and brothers?
MR. STORY: I have one brother that’s younger than me and he lives here in Oak Ridge and I’ve got one sister that’s older than me that lives in Dyllis, back behind K-25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What are their names?
MR. STORY: My sister’s name is Rita, R-I-T-A Dell Manning Story and my brother is Lynn Ed Story.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were growing up in Paducah as a young boy, what do you remember it like a typical day was like?
MR. STORY: Well, I was only three years old, so my memory is kind of dull, but I do remember riding the buses all the time and going to Walgreens on Saturday to eat a hot dog. Daddy always took us to Walgreens to eat a hot dog with sauerkraut on it. We looked forward to that and that was really a treat because we didn’t have much and back then, we lived in Paducah. Nobody in Paducah had running sewage. We still had out houses and I remember that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what did your father do for income for the family?
MR. STORY: Well, he worked at a shoe factory in Paducah and there’s a lot of history in Paducah. Paducah back then though it was Indians that come to Paducah after the Ice Age and there’s a lot of history in Paducah. But anyway, they started building things on the [inaudible]. Lewis and Clark come through there and settled there for a year or two before they went out west and so Daddy got a job to help raise a family. He had the farm and he started working at the shoe factory making 25 cents a day and he told me one time that some mornings he’d get up and he’d eat peas that he grew outside of the window of his apartment. I don’t see how he did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what his job duties were when he worked there?
MR. STORY: No. I was still too young to realize it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother? Did she work?
MR. STORY: No. She stayed at home to take care of us children. Back then that’s just the way history was in ways everybody else done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did the family come to Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: Well, Daddy had heard that there were some openings in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he had never heard the name, but the tales was he could make more money. So Daddy got on a Greyhound bus and came down here to see if he could get a job on his vacation at the shoe factory. He applied for a job and got on. So they sent him to school out at X-10 and he stayed there for about a year and a half. At that time, us, and my mother would live on the farm. Daddy stayed there a year, here in Oak Ridge for a year or two. He come back and got us and we came down in 1943.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where he lived when he was here by himself?
MR. STORY: Yes. It was called the Huts. I believe that’s where Midtown is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And stayed in a hutment?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever tell you what it looked like, in a hutment?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall him ever saying where he went for employment when he first came here?
MR. STORY: No. He sure didn’t. He never did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the family––
MR. STORY: Oh, yes, I do. He went to the Gates. At Gate 25 and stood in line with the other boys because they were trying to get on too. I remember that now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when the family came to Oak Ridge a year later, how did the family get here?
MR. STORY: We came down on a Greyhound bus. My daddy had to have papers to meet us at the Gates and then we––My mother had to have papers to switch back and forth, papers to identify us and to identify him. Back then there was security breaches and we had to be very careful.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the first home?
MR. STORY: Our first home was Meadow Road. We attended Cedar Hill School. I went to first and second grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you lived on Meadow Road, what type of house did you live in?
MR. STORY: It was a flat top. Oh, the roads were still gravel. The flat top was a two bedroom and my brother, sister, mom, dad, and I lived in that two bedroom flat top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was the flat top heated?
MR. STORY: It was heated with coal. We had coal boxes, and once every two weeks, a coal truck would come around with conveyor belts and fill the coal boxes up. Those conveyor belts really made us boys just go out there and stare at it because it moved on its own. That was a good time to see something like that. We’d never seen anything like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you attended Cedar Hill. What grades did you attend at Cedar Hill?
MR. STORY: First and second.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of your teachers’ names?
MR. STORY: No. I sure don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like going to school?
MR. STORY: Yes, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, Cedar Hill is real close to Meadow Road, isn’t it?
MR. STORY: Right. As a matter of fact, it’s about 50 steps.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about, at Cedar Hill that you liked or disliked the most?
MR. STORY: Let’s see. That would be going outside and play.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Playground time?
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you went through the fifth grade at Cedar Hill?
MR. STORY: No, first and second.
MR. HUNNICUTT: First and second.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay and then where did you go to school?
MR. STORY: Glenwood.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now the family, I assumed, moved.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did the family move to then?
MR. STORY: You know, I don’t remember that road’s name now you got me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s out here in the east end of Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it, what type of house did you move into?
MR. STORY: It was flat top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it a two bedroom?
MR. STORY: Two bedroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you have a brother and a sister, you mentioned.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In a two bedroom flat top, it was kind of tight quarters, wasn’t it?
MR. STORY: There wasn’t much room. We just had to love each other.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what a flat top looks like inside.
MR. STORY: Well, a flat top when you go in, there’s no back door. You go in the front door. There’s a little bitty room called the living room and then you go to the right and it’s the kitchen and then you go to the left, there’s one bedroom and then down the little hallway, there’s another bedroom and us three kids lived in the back bedrooms. But the walls were so thin we all sung at night to go to sleep. Back then we were all in bed by 8 or 8:30. We didn’t have any entertainment.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what type of material was the flat top made out of?
MR. STORY: The flat top material, it was made mostly of plywood, but on top, there was, it was asphalt, I believe, or tar.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rubberized roof of some sort?
MR. STORY: Right. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: House was furnished, I guess, when you lived there?
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when your family came on the Greyhound bus, I guess your father had already got a flat top for you to live in, is that right?
MR. STORY: Right. Back then, you were gauged on what kind of job you had, to what kind of house you had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the family just brought personal clothing and some items and––
MR. STORY: That was it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Had to leave a lot back from where you were?
MR. STORY: But I remember the guards going through our suitcases very closely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So after you’re in Glenwood School, you attended the third through what grades?
MR. STORY: The third and then we moved again. We got around.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why you moved so much?
MR. STORY: Better location, closer to the stores because we walked everywhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the next home after Glenwood?
MR. STORY: Arkansas Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which was still out here in east end?
MR. STORY: Right, east end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And to a flat top out here?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two bedroom?
MR. STORY: Two bedroom and the evening sun would go in those three plate glass windows and my momma would cook supper, it would be boiling hot. Daddy got an idea to plant kudzu vines out in front of that flat top and it worked. One summer he planted kudzu vines. It grew up at that window over the roof and us kids would lay there at night and you hear that stuff grow. It would go flop, flop. It’d grow fast, flop, flop, flop. So, the house still stayed hot. Daddy got an idea, he made a self-lawn sprinkler and hooked the hose to it and put it on top of that flap top and turned it on and cooled it down for my mother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, where was the stove for heating located in the flat top?
MR. STORY: You know, I don’t remember. I really don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they cold in the winter time?
MR. STORY: Yes, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Hot in the summer time?
MR. STORY: Right. In some cases, you’d feel the wind coming through the cracks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mainly, it was just a plywood box with a roof on it.
MR. STORY: Right. Well, that was it. That’s the way the Government wanted it. It reminded you of––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Temporary housing.
MR. STORY: When I went to the Army, my barracks were like that. So, it reminded me of a building complex.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when you lived on Arkansas, how far away was Glenwood School?
MR. STORY: Oh, I’d say less than a mile because I remember getting out of Glenwood School in the afternoons, I’d go to the grocery store and wait on the bus that my daddy rode to work. He and I would have races when he got off that bus, I was sitting there ready for him. He would run up Arkansas, about four houses and of course, he’d let me win every time, but at the time, I didn’t know that. I thought I got him good. But he let me win.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you notice any difference in Glenwood School than Cedar Hill, do you recall any difference?
MR. STORY: No, there was no difference. But the seats, I started at the age where I started recognizing the teachers, their names, Miss Solos, Miss Watkins and they tried to teach us things that we didn’t know. I was a slow learner and I studied a lot and so, I learned quite a bit though because they took time to talk to me, to make me settle down, to realize what was going on in the classroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a lot of kids in the classroom?
MR. STORY: There was. There surely was. Boys and girls stuttered a lot. I kept my stuttering for several years after that but I had a good childhood growing up, but in some cases, the kids started making fun of me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how did you handle that?
MR. STORY: I handled it by being quiet. I wouldn’t speak up because I knew that they were liking me now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what a typical classroom looked like at Glenwood?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do. There was finger painting prints on the walls and at the time, they still do construction outside. I never would forget that sound because it was these jackhammers making a lot of noise. We would go outside and play. There was a lot of blue jays hollering and it was not a word. But I stayed quiet. I didn’t speak up like I should have.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you enjoy school during that time?
MR. STORY: I was kind of backward because of the shyness of my nature.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall having much homework when you went to Glenwood?
MR. STORY: No. I do remember though my lunch was in a brown bag and because the brown bag did cost much money. I think it’s a penny for five or something like that. We had to take care of that brown bag, but if it rained and we got wet, Momma would have to wrap our sandwiches in newspaper and tie it with a string. In the fourth grade for some reason, the teacher asked me if I’d like to work in the cafeteria and I said yes. So I went to the cafeteria on Monday at lunch time and I washed them dishes, emptied them trays and got a free lunch and let me tell you, that was a big deal back then. I was proud of that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work the whole remaining year you was in the fourth grade at the cafeteria?
MR. STORY: About every three weeks. I couldn’t wait until my time was coming again.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember, did they have a safety patrol when you were going to school?
MR. STORY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about that.
MR. STORY: Okay. After 1947, ‘46 and ‘48, they opened the gates in ‘52 and so in 1948, my grandmother and granddaddy come down here and we had to give them three months’ notice. I’m going backwards now. I missed something and so, three months’ notice, so ever who it was, went to Paducah and screened my grandfather and grandparents. They had to fill out papers and then we had to fill out papers and when they went back to the gate out here going to K-25, they got off the Greyhound bus. We passed the papers across to the guards and that’s when we first got our car. We’ve not run just every once in a while and because we had to push it off to get it started. But we swapped papers and my grandparents would come in and they’d stay about three or four days and they’d have to go back. They weren’t allowed to stay here a certain length of time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of car did the family have?
MR. STORY: It was a Dodge. We called it Betsy Dodge. Why that name come up, I have no idea, but I do know the police stopped Daddy one time on the Turnpike coming back from the garden we made that summer out at the riding academy on the west end of town. The police pulled Daddy over and us three kids was in the back and Momma was in the car and he said, “Do you know that you went 30 miles an hour on the Turnpike?” That was speeding and Daddy says, “This car won’t do 30 miles.” So, but he just gave the warning because he seen us kids back in the back. But us kids were crying.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned that visitors came to the K-25 gate and that’s the same gate the family came through, when they first got here, correct?
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I guess, if you came from the west, that would be where you’d enter.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And Elza is the gate if you was on the east end.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s strange. I never heard that the people that were coming to visit got interviewed for the game. That’s interesting to know.
MR. STORY: It is.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Security was really tight.
MR. STORY: It was back then and I remember and I keep [inaudible]. They opened up a drive-in theater. There was a gate, so I was eight years old and like I said, we were all in bed by 8:30, 9:00. For some reason, we stayed up late that night and Momma and Daddy let us go to see the drive-in. Of course, we didn’t have our money, so we just rode in the back. We weren’t mean. We were mischief, so we got in free that way for some reason that night, Gabby Hayes got on top of the projection both times and started to sing. So I went down there and for some reason, Gabby Hayes reached down and shook my hand. That tickled me to death and of course, we’d go to the movies and see Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes and Tom Mix and the Lone Ranger, sort of the old actors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For people that might view this interview, tell us a little more about Gabby Hayes. What kind of roles did he play?
MR. STORY: Gabby Hayes was in the movies with Roy Rogers. He was Roy Rogers’ sidekick. He was Roy Rogers’ cook on the trail, the old covered wagons. He always had food for the workers. Roy Rogers was a peace making person. He always caught the bad guys.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a cowboy?
MR. STORY: He was a cowboy 100 percent. Him and Gene Autry was our favorite ones.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s skip ahead a little bit. Do you ever recall going down to Middletown to the theater and seeing any of Western stars that came there?
MR. STORY: I did. Yeah. Cameron.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rod Cameron?
MR. STORY: Rod Cameron.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was here during the Gate opening ceremony.
MR. STORY: Right, exactly. Well, I remember him and he was well known in the movies back then. As time went on, we finally moved from Arkansas to Jefferson Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Before we get to the Jefferson Circle house––
MR. STORY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a typical dress was for a boy to wear to school. What was it?
MR. STORY: It was blue jeans, a shirt. I never had a store bought shirt until I was a freshman in high school. My mother made our clothes except the shoes and pants that we wore and then––
MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of shoes did boys wear in those days?
MR. STORY: Well, they were only some of them and I remember Daddy bought us some shoes at the plant, at the store out there and they had steel toes and in the winter time, that steel would get cold and freeze our toes off. We called them brogans.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s a term that you don’t hear much anymore is brogans unless you’re old enough to––
MR. STORY: That’s right and mackintosh. You could not wear––My daddy had a mackintosh ever since I knew him up until the day he passed away. Them old mackintoshes last forever and so, my mother knew how to manage. I knew––I remember my mother taking supper scraps and have them for dinner for the next day and they were delicious, maybe because [inaudible]. I don’t know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s talk about your father’s work. When he came to Oak Ridge, you said he worked at K-25 or he started at K-25? What did he do there, do you recall?
MR. STORY: He went to school. They sent him to school out at K-25 and he worked at K-25. I don’t know what his job title was at K-25. He worked there for about six months and they transferred him to after school to Y-12, where he worked in building 92-12 as a chemical operator and us boys we would always ask Dad, “What, Daddy what do you do during the day?” But he never would give us a direct answer and so, as time went on, we didn’t even ask no more. We just took it for granted. Daddy was going to work. You know, to make a living, so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many years did your father work at Y-12?
MR. STORY: Well, he started in ’43, end of year ’43 to ’79.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He retired from out there? Did you mother work any when she was here in Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: No. She applied at Y-12 and the interviewer told her if she would have taken chemistry in high school, she would’ve got on, but she didn’t do it. So, she just stayed home and raised us kids. One summer she did get a job at Philpot Dry Cleaners, down at Brunner’s. The Philpots were good people. Let me tell you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember when they had a store in Jackson Square?
MR. STORY: Yes. Sure do, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And so they had one in––Where was the other? Did you say?
MR. STORY: Brunner’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Brunner’s, down, oh yeah.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where Brunner’s Market is.
MR. STORY: And they had air raid once down there and us boys was curious. When that thing went up, how close could we get to it? Not very close. That air raid run for hours afterwards because that alarm went off. It went off in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why they sounded that alarm?
MR. STORY: That alarm was a test alarm. I did it a lot later when I went to high school. But that alarm went off every day at 12:00 and so us boys curious, mischief, not mean, would see how close we could get to it and it was not very close. So, we tried earplugs. Put cotton in our ears. That didn’t work. So, back then, that sounds dull, but us kids that’s what we done for fun. We done the unusual. We couldn’t afford toys. Daddy would make most of our toys and we had fun with them and when we did get a toy, we appreciated it and we took care of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And was your brother and sister born in Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: No, Paducah too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All at Paducah. Well, what do you remember about your sister? Is she the youngest?
MR. STORY: Oldest.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oldest. Did she boss you boys around or how did that work out?
MR. STORY: She was not headstrong like that. She’d play a game with us. We played Pickup Sticks with her. We played Jacks. Ball and Jacks and she beat us every time. She’d beat my pants off. I mean, telling you, I dreaded to go play with her later on because I never won.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, how do you play pickup sticks?
MR. STORY: Pickup Sticks. I got some under the couch because I taught my grandbabies. You get about 25 sticks which have sharp ends and you drop it and you pick up a stick. But if you move another stick, your time is over. So each stick counts five points and if you move another stick by picking that one up, you miss your turn, so the next person gets to do it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, what if you pick one stick up, can you take that stick and use it as a pick like by head?
MR. STORY: You could flip it like that or this way or you could push one end down and pick it up this way and––
MR. HUNNICUTT: So each stick is 5 points?
MR. STORY: Right and it’s a very interesting toy because you’re always thinking and you’re looking at the other guy. Look at how many he’s got.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you got to concentrate on what you’re doing.
MR. STORY: Exactly and marbles. Marbles, this thumb is still wider than this thumb where I shot marbles so much as a boy growing up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the rules of marbles?
MR. STORY: No Steelies. No do rows.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what steelies and do rows are.
MR. STORY: Steelies are a steel ball, ball bearing ball because the steelies will burst the marbles. No steelies, do rollers are about this big. They’d do the same thing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just to make a marble?
MR. STORY: Right. And then, if you shot a marble in there, if you was good enough, that marble will keep spinning and I got that good. It would actually drill a hole in the dust. That was great and I kept my marbles in a cigar box, but to get that cigar box, you had to be patient. I got my cigar box at Jackson Square Pharmacy. I went in there one day and I asked the clerk if she had seen a cigar box. She said, “Why sure”. So I went back a couple of days later, she had me three. Oh, I was cock of the world. I’ll tell you that was true. My buddies wanted one. My buddies wanted them. I know. I mean, I was greedy. I [inaudible] them boxes. I took them things home and put them under my bed and hid them and I kept my marbles in there too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Cigar boxes they had a lot of stuff in them. That was in those days.
MR. STORY: Right. Back then, why didn’t I keep that stuff and my comic books. Comic books was the thing on Monday night. Monday night was comic book trading night. After supper, everybody ate at the same time back then. Nobody missed supper. You bet to play basketball. Momma hollered Jerry, but you still played basketball. Jerry, second time, where are you? Jerry Brooks, wham, there’s still dust churning. Just floating because I knew to get in when Momma said that Monday night the boys come up. Sometimes these boys will have GI Joe comic books. Ooh man. I traded one time four of my comic books for that one GI Joe comic book. Boy, I was in hog heaven. Let me tell you. I started reading that GI Joe book and hid it under my mattress for about six or seven months before I brought it out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much did comic books cost?
MR. STORY: Three cents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where would you buy most of your comic books?
MR. STORY: Jefferson Drug Store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now let me back up to the marbles again. How big was the circle that you put the marbles in?
MR. STORY: It was about four feet. Now that’s a good size. I mean it was like this and it was right back here on the corner where the grocery store used to be. They had four shopping centers in Oak Ridge back then. I think the EAT Store, Jefferson, Grove Center, Elm Grove, one at the top of the hill here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Outer Drive?
MR. STORY: Outer Drive, Elm Grove.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Down here in East Village.
MR. STORY: East Village.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And Middletown.
MR. STORY: And Middletown and back then on Mondays and Thursdays were the rolling grocery store would come on the lane and Momma would get her sugar, flour and cheese.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a rolling grocery store looked like.
MR. STORY: A rolling grocery store nowadays looks like a school bus. But it had the engine and the hood sticking out, instead of the flat front of a school bus and it was the delight to get on there because boy, sometimes that driver would give us boys candy and that was a treat. So, it got to the point where everybody jumped from the bus first. Us boys didn’t get the customers run to get on there because we thought they would give us some candy and back then there were coal boxes. They’d wash them out in the summer time and sleep out of them, had a good time with them old coal boxes. They had a little door in the bottom. We didn’t use the top ones with the big lids. We’d go in the little hole because it was fun and we’d scare the mailman and just had a good time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How big was the inside of a coal box?
MR. STORY: It was about a four by four by four, something like that and the coal trucks come around every two weeks. My brother had to go out and get coal one night and I’d go out and get the coal the next night and it was coal furnaces.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you carry the coal in?
MR. STORY: In a coal bucket.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did they look like?
MR. STORY: It was a bucket that was about a foot and a half tall with a handle on it and had a scoop looking front and it doesn’t need us to get rid of the coal to throw it in the furnace.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Had a lip on it so you could get it in there?
MR. STORY: Well, it’s supposed to because Momma got us because we put a ash on the floor and you’d open that furnace up and that coal dust would just go all the way up to the ceiling, just row and so back then, we breathed it. And so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what the floor was made out of in one of those flat tops?
MR. STORY: No, oh yes. It was tile. As I remember, there was tile on the bottom on that grayish looking tile with single, with a piece of silver metal going across for the seams where they put it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it one piece like linoleum or something like that?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now what about the floor in the TDU?
MR. STORY: Oh, the TDU, as a matter of fact, the floor is still there. We moved in the TDU in 1952 and I think Dad bought that TDU for about $1,900 or $2,000 and so he rented the other side for a year or two, but they converted it over for a whole house, so us kids was raised in that TDU during our high school teenage growing up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back to the marbles a minute.
MR. STORY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did, where––Was there a marble rink that was down here in the East Village shopping area that––
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody gathered at?
MR. STORY: After school. Man, did we have, we looked forward to that and sometimes my brother would come home with his head hanging down like this and I’d get home first and Daddy would say, “Well, my son’s lost again.” My brother, but I never had that attitude, but I had put a plan and I lost some, but I won some too. And then one time I traded my marbles up for a boar head machete. Oh, a big knife. Ooh, man. I was in trouble. Daddy and Momma got on me and I had to take that machete back, but the boy wouldn’t trade it back to me. So, I had come back home with it and Daddy got rid of it someway or somehow.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever recall the guy that worked at the Oak Ridge Hospital that used to take over Carly Springs and make knives, throwing knives and axes out of?
MR. STORY: Axes, yes. I sure do. Matter of fact, he made me an ax one time and sharpened it out at the spring and my daddy made me a handle and we got so good at throwing them things, we could back off 10, 15 steps and throw it in a tree. It would go just like that, right into it because all we done back then was practice. We’d practice and practice and we had gotten good at it and yoyos. My brother won several awards at 20th year throwing them yoyos down, Walking the Dog, Rock A Bye Baby, Spaghetti Necks, all that good stuff. Man, we had contests and he won three or four trophies down there one summer. I was jealous. But I never did get as good as him. But I kept trying.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were shooting marbles, before you got your cigar boxes, what did you carry the marbles in?
MR. STORY: We’d carry them in our pockets. Matter of fact, I’d carry them so much that I wear our jeans out and Momma just put a patch on them. She didn’t tell us to get rid of the marbles.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many marbles did you have to put in the circle in the center?
MR. STORY: Sixteen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody put sixteen in?
MR. STORY: Sometimes four, sometimes five. And the big pot was sixteen, that big pot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you determine who shot first?
MR. STORY: You know, I forgot. I think we flipped a coin. I’m not sure. Oh, it was a holler “Firsty” and now I said firsty first. No, I did. Firsty’s. So––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever remember that brings a thought about playing ball and who gets to hit first and you take a ball and bat and you hold it up and you put your hands up to bat?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Handle and whoever.
MR. STORY: Just got to the top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then somebody would do something on the end and put your thumbs up or something.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t remember how that was.
MR. STORY: Did you have to go like that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. STORY: Yeah. I sure do with that. I sure do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the first person that shot marbles, I shot marbles but I don’t think I did it at the level you did, but you would keep shooting as long as you knocked the marble out of the circle, right?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you get so good at it, the marble hit and just died right there on the spot and then you continued to keep shooting it, right?
MR. STORY: Yeah, it’d spin.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’d spin.
MR. STORY: Because you had so much [inaudible] on it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now I always remembered a cherry marble.
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a favorite marble most boys had and they didn’t want to put it in the circle.
MR. STORY: Because you were afraid it’d get busted.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Where did you get your marbles? Do you remember?
MR. STORY: I sure don’t. It might have been at the––I think Daddy got me a bag at McCrory’s or––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Probably so. Five and 10 cent store.
MR. STORY: Five and 10 cent store and he split it with me and my brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But there was an art to shoot marbles, wasn’t there?
MR. STORY: Oh yes, sir. At first, I had a hard time before I got good actually. I got so good that some of the boys said, “I ain’t playing, Story.” I used to play with the marbles, bring them home and show them to Daddy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever carry the newspaper when you were growing up?
MR. STORY: Yes. After we moved from Markets over to Jefferson Circle, let’s see, I was in the fifth grade. I got a [Knoxville] News Sentinel paper out in the Garden Apartments.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Garden Apartments located?
MR. STORY: Across from––where the armory, where it used to be down on Jefferson Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where the Girl’s Club is now?
MR. STORY: Yeah. Across on the hill up there and it was every morning. That’s where I had to get up at 4:30 or 5 and I couldn’t afford a paper bag, so Momma made me one out of the awning material. I don’t know if you remember them outside chairs that you sit in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right. The canvas kind of––
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Material.
MR. STORY: Because the bags was 35 cents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I had forgotten about that. You had to buy the bag at first and then they would give you a bag later, didn’t they?
MR. STORY: Yeah. So I couldn’t afford it, so I just––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go pick your papers up?
MR. STORY: At the top of the hill on Vanderbilt and when we was sitting there, me and Tony Galardo was, I went to school with him. He had one on one side of the street and I had one with him. Women would be sitting there waiting on their papers and these women would bring their husbands out, two of them, two women and two men, different apartments and their husbands would lean up against the telephone post and they would be reading a book and the taxi cab would come by and pick them up. The taxi cab driver would go around and take his arm and put him in the back of the seat and we found out later on, that they were scientists at the plants. Yeah. And that was remarkable. We told everybody in town about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now was the Garden Apartments like they are today or was the––
MR. STORY: They was for the higher echelon, the Rigby. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The S and H Dormitories was gone by the time you delivered papers up there and the structure that’s there today is the way it was.
MR. STORY: Right, and then after we moved over to Jefferson Circle, the dormitories by the Boys’ Club, we’d climb in the attics and catch pigeons and I remember my first two pigeons, Little Top and Big Top. We’d catch them at night time with a flashlight and we’d take them home and build a cage for them and we kept them caged up for three weeks. We fed them and watered them and when we opened the cage, they automatically took off, but they come back about an hour or two later. They’d take off and come back. But we used to put them in shoe boxes and ride them with our bicycles to Jackson Square or Jefferson Circle on Saturdays and we’d have pigeon races. Our buddies would be back at their boxes in our backyard and we’d let the pigeons go exactly at 12:00 and they’d time us and time our pigeons and sometimes they didn’t come until the day after, but they always come back. We called them homing pigeons and so they started having babies, my pigeons and so the pigeons started landing on the neighbors’ houses and boy, did they mess in both sides. So that summer they had a good talk to me. “Jerry, you’re going to have to get rid of them pigeons.” The best test the pigeons are pooping up there are dissolving the roofs of the TDUs out behind us, so that year we had to, excuse me, and so but we had to get rid of them. Back then that’s all we had to do. Like I say, we was mischief, but we did trespass to get into the dormitories to get them pigeons.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there people living in the dormitories at that time?
MR. STORY: No, they was getting ready to tear them down. That was in ’53, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s talk a little more about the pigeons. What type of food did you feed them?
MR. STORY: I fed them corn, bread and water.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now was this cooked corn or––
MR. STORY: No, it was hard raw corn.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Raw corn?
MR. STORY: It sure was. I think Daddy got me some at the feed store. I forgot where the feed store was at that time. Of course, back then, my daddy and all his other workers that worked with him go to the feed store and they’d go in and sit around the old pot belly stove and tell jokes and lies and all the good stuff because I went with him one time and I didn’t want to go back. But––
MR. HUNNICUTT: You don’t remember where that was?
MR. STORY: It might have been in Gamble Valley, not in [inaudible] Valley. Where was that, the feed store?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember what valley?
MR. STORY: Gamble Valley.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Gamble Valley?
MR. STORY: Yeah, that’s where it was. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What––Tell me about a pigeon coop. What’s it look like and what is it made out of?
MR. STORY: A pigeon coop with chicken wire and a box about this wide and about this wide and on the end of it, we had wood and a perch and a hole about this big around and Daddy separated the boxes in there and some of the pigeons would go this way and some would go this way and some would go up here. He had holes up here and so, but [inaudible] on pieces of wood and done it automatically and we’d sit there for hours and just on the ground just watching pigeons, but in the summer time when that poop went through that chicken wire on the bottom, it stunk. But we had a good time, good feel and we had a good time with our buddies. Our buddies, like I said, we’d have pigeon races and it was good clean fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a lot of kids in the neighborhoods then.
MR. STORY: There was lots of kids because I remember playing in that creek across the Brunner’s right behind Robertsville. Back then there was a movie called Mike Fink, King of the River, and we had poles. We had a piece of plywood one time and we put inner tubes in them and tied them to it and we’d go down through there back behind Jefferson and under the bridge, under Oak Ridge Turnpike, down that road all the way down to Brunner’s. Mike Fink and then we’d pick them to go Avi rafts that we made and actually carry them back behind the Bus Terminal Road. On the roads for buses, but I never rode a bus but every couple of times, I did. But we always rode our bicycles all the way up to the high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of bicycle did you have?
MR. STORY: I had an Armaan, didn’t have fenders. So it had rained when we went to the high school. They did much streak up here and one back here and I’d stopped at Robertsville in the wintertime and combed my hair because back then we used Wildroot cream on [inaudible] and we put that stuff on our hair and Momma put a toboggan on me. Still yeah, she was taking care of me in high school and this part of the hair was sticking out and I actually had to stop and comb my [inaudible] out of my hair while a little cream on the top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you carried a comb in your pocket?
MR. STORY: Yeah. I mean, I was big time. I thought I was. I was it on the stick.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, when you lived in Jefferson, what school did you go to after you left Glenwood?
MR. STORY: Okay. I went to Glenwood and Willow Brook but I went to fifth grade and I remember that year I stopped stuttering and I had more friends than a barrel of monkeys and I started learning stuff that I never learned before. Miss Ellis, she was a real strict teacher and I have got, I got spankings because I didn’t know my multiplication and Friday, boy, let me tell you by Monday morning I knew. Oh, man.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did they spank you with?
MR. STORY: She would spank my hand with the ruler and I’d jerk, you learn these multiplications now. I mean it and at the time it hurt my fingers, but as I growed up, I said, “Well, I’m glad she done that because I learned them.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember having to go to the blackboard and write something on the blackboard in front of the class or anything?
MR. STORY: No, because I wasn’t a good speller. I wasn’t a good speller then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have to stay after school and write I will not such as talk in class and things of that nature?
MR. STORY: Yes. “Jerry, you sit and you sit in that corner over there.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think [inaudible] school did.
MR. STORY: I thought my eyes were going cross-eyed sitting and staring at that corner. But it was fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have to write 100 times I will not talk in class or misbehave or whatever.
MR. STORY: Yeah. That was a year. After all that happened, my teacher signed me up to be safety patrol. Boy, I gosh, that made me feel so big and important.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well now, how was you distinguished being a safety patrolman versus the other students? What made you different?
MR. STORY: I––Because the teacher signed me up for it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Really?
MR. STORY: I thought it was––
MR. HUNNICUTT: And that were the appearance, did you wear anything that made you be a safety patrol?
MR. STORY: It was a belt, some tie thing, with a badge on it. Ooh, man, I shined. That was fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what were your duties as a safety patrol?
MR. STORY: My duties was down there where Bus Terminal Road is across the road from going up Jefferson Avenue to Robertsville Avenue to stop the cars, to let the students go across.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now let’s tell the viewer’s where Willow Brook School was located.
MR. STORY: Willow Brook School is located at Robertsville and Jefferson Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Same place it is today?
MR. STORY: Same place it is today.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you was the marshal across the street I guess, you’d say, to stop the cars?
MR. STORY: Man, I was in hog heaven. I mean I strutted like a Banty rooster. I thought I was something else.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: I’d stand there with a smile on my face and I’d go home and just smile and Momma would say, “Jerry, you’re happy, ain’t you?” I’d say, “Sure am, Momma.” Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about during the school, did you have duties to keep the kids in line or do anything inside the school during the day?
MR. STORY: No, it was just after school only.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But if you was out on the playground and something happened during the day, you had authority to take care of it?
MR. STORY: Yes, would report and when it was Flag Day, in May, us patrolman, safety patrol would get the bus like protect the nit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Also, did you ever collect lightning bugs and Coke bottles to school?
MR. STORY: Yes. And gave me two, I think it was five cents per fruit jar. The scientists at the plant wanted them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do with them? Where did you turn them in?
MR. STORY: I think it was at school, Willow Brook, and they came and got and collected them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much did you get for Coke bottles in those days?
MR. STORY: Two cents, maybe one in some stores.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now Coke bottles were returned because they re-used them.
MR. STORY: Exactly. Back in the days and when we drank our Coke bottle, we’d play Far Away.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about that.
MR. STORY: Well, we, Far Away. Sometimes we’d be able to afford a bag of peanuts and we’d put them peanuts in that Coke bottle. Oh, that’s how it would make it bubble and taste so good. But when you got to the end, by then everybody would look at each other. Let’s play Far Away and so on the bottom of that bottle is where that bottle was manufactured so every, got it, want it. That other guy had to buy your Coke, either then or later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It had the town and the state it was made in.
MR. STORY: Not on the bottom. Memphis, Rockwood, and let’s see. Morristown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know, there was a little trick to figure out which bottle was the furthest if you was going to pick one out of the carton, you know, that you hadn’t looked. If it had a lot of skin up places on it, it’d been around a long time. You’d pick that bottle. Remember that?
MR. STORY: They was white almost.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: About a stick wide. I did not know that. I’d learned something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what about, what do you remember about milk trucks coming to the house?
MR. STORY: Milk trucks, all right. Milk trucks would come to the house on Monday, oh, no, Thursdays. Yeah, Pet Dairies. Momma always bought Pet because and Pet Dairies would fill their truck up with ice and we’d always eat that ice in the summer time. Go out there to the milk truck and that old boy would give us a piece of ice and we’d put salt on it. Well, salt is not good for you, but boy, we had a time licking that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Put salt on the ice?
MR. STORY: Yeah, it was good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What’s that do for it?
MR. STORY: It just makes it taste better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve learned something there.
MR. STORY: Keeps it from sticking to your tongue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, keeps it from sticking to your tongue, I heard here.
MR. STORY: How about that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: We were talking about rolling stores earlier. They didn’t sell meat, did they?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was just vegetables and canned goods?
MR. STORY: Just vegetables and canned goods and downtown, Oak Ridge was at Jackson Square. Now when we lived on by Cedar Hill on Meadow Road, once a month everybody at Oak Ridge would walk down to downtown Oak Ridge. There was a grocery store down there. I know who run it, Bobby Mitchell, mother, daddy. I don’t know if you knew Bobby Mitchell or not, but he was the championship of Oak Ridge football with Jackie Pope and all them boys. But she was allowed to go down there with us three kids and the Government would allow her three pounds of cheese, a bag of flour and a bag of sugar. Everybody got it free once a month.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She had ration stamps?
MR. STORY: Right. Everybody had and Daddy would buy cigarettes there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where the grocery store was located in Jackson Square?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do. It is where University Insurance used to be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where Razzleberry’s––
MR. STORY: Where Razzleberry is––
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the community store.
MR. STORY: That was the community store and right around the corner was the Music Box across the street. What was his name?
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ll think of it in a minute.
MR. STORY: Yeah, Buddy. He was a good person. He had the Music Box and the old 45.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Pollard was his name.
MR. STORY: Pollard. He was a nice person because we’d see him every once in a while. He was kind of bald headed, but he was a nice person.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s talk about Jackson Square a little bit.
MR. STORY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember some of the stores that were in Jackson Square and where do you remember they were located?
MR. STORY: Okay. First thought that comes in my mind is the theaters. There was a Ridge Theater and a Center Theater and back then, on Saturdays they had serials at the Center Theater.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You talking about movies?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Not cereal you eat?
MR. STORY: No. But they had serials on there, which was––It was a treat to go see a movie. I mean yeah, a talking movie and so we’d walk or ride a bus. It was down to Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: From down Jefferson all the way up there?
MR. STORY: And there would be a line, if you’re looking at Center Theater nowadays which is the Playhouse, to the left, all the way down and back to stairways, by the Soup Kitchen, all the way back behind [inaudible] back then, there would be a line and the serials only last about 20 minutes, but we’d stand in line for almost two hours and to get into the theater, it’d cost us nine cents. That was a lot of money for us. We had to get a lot out of that Coke box. Of course, Daddy would help us every once in a while or Momma and so, you buy or brought a candy bar at the drug store down at the end of the street which the drug store looked like the fifties.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which drug store?
MR. STORY: By the Ridge Theater.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Service Drug Store?
MR. STORY: Service Drug Store. They had the black and white tile in there. It reminded you of the happy days really.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the happy days.
MR. STORY: It was the happy days for us because man, to get a cherry Coke, that was a treat too or a hamburger.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They had a fountain to the left.
MR. STORY: They had a fountain.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s where Big Ed’s Pizza is today.
MR. STORY: Exactly and boy oh boy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well now, Jefferson had one too.
MR. STORY: Exactly. We went in there a lot too. We would order––Let me tell you what us boys would order. We’d order a gag bomb and a pine float. Okay? Now a gag bomb back then, we called it a hamburger and a pine float was a glass of water with a toothpick in it and them waitresses would get so upset with us that they’d say, “Boom boys, leave us alone today.” We were stubborn, so they finally made us a gag bomb and a pine float and word got out about it, so almost everybody, all the [inaudible] started calling hamburgers gag bombs and pine floats and back behind Jefferson Drug Store, there was a big bank where the dumpsters or trash cans were and in the summer time, we would take a five gallon bucket and go behind the drug store and filled it with water and took it about seven or eight times and poured down that bank to make it slick.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mud slide.
MR. STORY: Mud slide man and we would get us a piece of cardboard and slide down that thing. Oh, we had fun–– until we got home and our pants had holes in them and mud all over them and boy, did Momma get upset.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You don’t remember a––
MR. STORY: Until we got home and our pants was––had holes in them and mud all over them and boy, did Momma get upset.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which brings up a question, do you remember how your mother washed the clothes that you guys made?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do. Monday was wash day and I could not stay after school. “Come on, Jerry. Let’s go play football.” No, it’s Monday. I mean telling you, I would split to go home because Momma’s old wash water was still in that washing machine. It was first of the ringers and I’d empty that water with a sauce pan and throw it outside the back door. That [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just throw it out in the back yard?
MR. STORY: And then the reason why I was so fast and her ended up gone because I’d always find a nickel or a penny there. Oh, boy. I’d take it over to the drug store. That was a lot of money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Those were the days.
MR. STORY: Those were the days and then Momma had the pants stretchers to stretch our jeans out. I think I’ve got one set left up in the attic somewhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did she do that?
MR. STORY: To make them look like they were ironed. She didn’t have to iron them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when you put your legs in them, they stuck out to the side, didn’t they?
MR. STORY: Exactly. You’d have to loosen them up and the brogans I had on didn’t help either because they was––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, brogan is a laced up top shoe, isn’t it?
MR. STORY: Laced up top. It was heavy. It was steel toed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And brogan was the name of the shoe, right?
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just an old clog busting looking shoe.
MR. STORY: It was and we’d kick clogs too. Man, because we all had gourds and them gourds was big. I tell you what. Daddy had a green thumb. I remember one time he had tomatoes on his vines, this big around. Bigger than sandwich size and had to use 2 x 4s to hold them on the vine because we’d go clean stables out, horse manure, sand from Melton Lake Drive from the river back then. Melton Hill wasn’t built so we could actually in the summer time walk all the way across that river from stone to stone and we got our bean poles over there. We’d chop them down for Daddy before. We done a lot. We all worked together. We didn’t fuss about it because we knew we had to pick berries or help can. In the spring time and the summer time, we’d go down to our neighbor’s house one week and help them can and they’d give us some of their food and then they’d come up our house and they help can and us boys would get in the house and get the fruit jars and wash them and dry them and pull the green apples to put them back. We’d put them on a paper towel and Momma would make fried apple pies and when Momma made fried apple pies, there would be people coming from miles around just to get them apple pies that my momma made. I mean she’d make five or six hundred. Even some of my relatives, they made special trips down here from Paducah and that’s about 300 miles.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And she’d put sugar on the outside of them after she took them out of the pan?
MR. STORY: Yeah. They were good, but I’ve got a recipe and I’ve been thinking about making some. But to dry them apples out was it took about two weeks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She made her own dough?
MR. STORY: Right. Yeah. She always had a business.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, who do you remember when you lived in Jackson where your mother did her grocery shopping?
MR. STORY: Grossinger was the best place, White Store. Because a White Store always had fresh and good looking meat. She always had good meat for our meals.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the Tulip Town Market there at Grove?
MR. STORY: I do, Tulip Town? I believe Tulip Town. Was it Tulip Town where CVS is now or where Sears used to be, I mean––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tulip Town Market? No, Tulip Town Market was always in Grove, oh, you talking about the White Store or another store?
MR. STORY: No, White Store was right there at Tulip.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, White Store came quite a few years later.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Into Grove.
MR. STORY: But that’s where she bought her groceries because she’d send me up there on the bicycle to get certain this, certain that and sometimes I’d buy the wrong thing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, now Jefferson had a grocery store in that area.
MR. STORY: EAT Store, I think I was 13 years old when I got my first job there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now where is the EAT Store?
MR. STORY: The EAT Store is where the meat market is now. What’s the name of it, J and J’s or something like that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: And that was my, of course, I had my paper route. But that was the first job. But to get my attention that Mr. Allen called mother to have me come into work that afternoon, we was camping out on Brookshire Drive. That was Friday nights and Saturday nights. We actually lived in the woods. That’s all we had to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you’re talking about the family or just you boys?
MR. STORY: Just boys and so, once Friday night came around and Saturday, we kept hearing all one. There’s an old road that goes around Brookshire Drive. There’s houses back then it wasn’t. But that one kept going on Saturday morning. So finally I heard my mother holler, Jerry. I finally heard her.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Came looking for you?
MR. STORY: Yeah, and I come running down through that road and there Mother was standing. “Mr. Allen called. You got your job, Jerry.” I was so excited that I left my stuff up there. Come find later the boys brought it home for me. But I started bagging groceries, me and Buddy Jones and so Buddy Jones passed away now, but he was 1 of my best buddies growing up here in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a good friend of mine too.
MR. STORY: He was something. He had a good family. His sisters I knew them well because we went to church with him at Robertsville Baptist Church and back then Mother and Daddy went to Robertsville Baptist Church. But we helped on Saturdays. Us boys would help down there on Fridays and Saturdays in the summer time to help build that church.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now where was the church located?
MR. STORY: From west to east, it’s back this side of Robertsville School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Same place it is today?
MR. STORY: Right and would have been on the ground on––
MR. HUNNICUTT: So Mr. Allen owned the EAT Store?
MR. STORY: Well, he run it. He didn’t own the building.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. STORY: And he was from Florida. He always wore fancy pants. He was a golfer. We always looked for the yellow pants. We weren’t used to stuff like that. We found out some of my buddies would bring Coke bottles in and get money for them. One night I was throwing trash out in back of the EAT Store and there my buddies were. They were getting Coke bottles out of the back and bringing them in the front.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Stay on the Coke bottles?
MR. STORY: We weren’t mean. We were mischief and they was doing that. We didn’t stop it. That was funny.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In that same building upstairs, do you recall what was up there?
MR. STORY: No, I don’t. I remember the steps going up there. It was real skinny. I remember seeing Mr. Allen going up there, but I don’t know if that was his office or what. Well, although, he might have lived up there. I don’t know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how long did you work at the EAT Store?
MR. STORY: About a year and a half.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now down in the Jefferson area besides the EAT Store, they had a grocery store. What else did they have there?
MR. STORY: A sporting goods store, a barber shop, the drug store and the fire department and that’s where we learned to order our gag bombs and pine floats.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The sports store, what was the name of that store, do you remember?
MR. STORY: Sports something. I don’t know if Daddy had been there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Sportsman maybe?
MR. STORY: Yeah. That’s it because Daddy made them fishing headicaws [ph].
MR. HUNNICUTT: What is a fishing headicaw [ph]?
MR. STORY: A headicaw [ph] nowadays people don’t realize what it is. But it’s a lead head with a hook on it with and lead is a no-no now to fish in the lakes because the ducks give––got the hooks in their mouths and all that stuff and I can see why. But Daddy would order bear hair from Chicago and this bear hair was very rare and he’d color it sometimes in Easter egg dye and when you pulled the headicaw [ph] through the water, you could stop it and it’d bunch up to get the fish attention and he and Bill he would make about 15 to 16 thousand a year and he sold them to these sporting goods stores in Oak Ridge and he got so good one year, that sometimes he didn’t use the vice. He just wrapped them with his hand like this. Throw it over, get another one. I remember him sitting there in the living room. I had to [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were saying he was sitting there.
MR. STORY: Bare footed with his feet like this in the winter time sitting there by the furnace so back then we got gas by that time and got rid of the coal front. He’d sit there with that hot furnace and my mother was warm natured and Daddy was cold natured and Momma would sit over there with her dish towel, like just trying to hint to him cut that heat off, but he would dye [inaudible] and he got so good at it and put glue on it and all that good pine [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: He’d have to heat the lead up and pour into a mold.
MR. STORY: Right and he would send me to the filling stations on my bicycle to pick up the lead parts that they used for balancing tires and that’s where we got our lead and he made his own mold and the back kitchen and the stove oven used to be back there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That is a no-no today, isn’t it?
MR. STORY: It is a no-no. Let me tell you and all his fishing rods and all. Matter of fact I still got some of his fishing rods and reels and several of his headicaws [ph]. I’ll give you some one day when I get up in the attic.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Way back when the family first come in the streets, you remember a lot of mud and––
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No matter where you went, there was a lot of mud?
MR. STORY: There was lots of mud. Matter of fact we used to get way off the roads and walk because it was so muddy. Because you didn’t know red mud would actually stick you in the ground and you’d leave your shoe in there sometimes. We had boardwalks and the boardwalks especially in the spring time, April showers come where we knew that the roads was going to get very––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Dirty?
MR. STORY: The only thing that would go through would be the Army jeeps that patrolled Oak Ridge back at the time. I never will forget them jeeps coming down Broadway with machine guns mounted on the back of them and an Army of men in there. We sometimes would be on the bus and Mother would actually get up when an Army man got on the bus with us three kids and offer that Army serviceman her seat and that’s what you call respect. Mother respected the Armed Forces because our young men, I was just a baby then, was getting killed in World War II and she respected the service. But every time she asked a serviceman to sit down, well, they would refuse her. They said, “No, ma’am. You sit right back down with them kids.” They was very polite.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how the weather was in the winter time when you were growing up here? Was it worse than it is now or––
MR. STORY: Yes, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of snow?
MR. STORY: Very much so. We’d have 14 to 18 inches of snow and it was cuckoo. Back then, you could make snow ice cream. You can’t now because the pollution is there and that ice cream was very good. Momma would get the snow and we’d eat ice cream, but to play in it, we had to put socks, three or four socks over our shoes to go outside and play and when we’d come in, we’d have to sit by the stove to let the ice thaw off of our socks because they was froze to our clothes, so we didn’t have enough to pull them off. They’d be froze too and so our hands is where they are. Nose is where they are. Ears is where they are. We didn’t have Botox like we do now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have any galoshes?
MR. STORY: I had galoshes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell us what galoshes are.
MR. STORY: Galoshes is a five buckle rubber boot. Galoshes slip over your shoes big enough and they helped a whole lot, but they still got cold but galoshes you could wade through mud with a smile on your face.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the family have a radio?
MR. STORY: Yes, we did. We had a radio up until 1952. Monday night and Sunday night we’d listen to a program called Inner Sanctum which was a scary show. Amos and Andy which was a funny––Daddy always liked Amos and Andy. That Amos and Andy show would come on. That was the time Daddy would pop popcorn and I think it was Monday or Tuesday night and the Wolf Man would come on Sunday nights. Yeah. And Monday nights, we’d listen to the radio and of course, back then, it was like I said a while ago, we was all in bed by 8 or 8:30 and we didn’t have TV until I was 12 years old, in 1952 and then it went off at 6:00. Crusader Rabbit was a cartoon on then and at 6:00, the test pattern would come on the TV and we sat and watch it. I mean we couldn’t believe that something was coming out of that box though. It was a sight to behold.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother ever listen to Queen for a Day? Do you remember that?
MR. STORY: Exactly. Matter of fact I do exercise twice a week now at the hospital. We all started a conversation about Queen for a Day. I think it was Jack King, the host, Queen for a Day. Let’s see, This Is Your Life.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jack Benny?
MR. STORY: Jack Benny and what was this man after him?
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ll think of it, maybe.
MR. STORY: But anyway, Jack Benny was really funny back then and Groucho Marx.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about during the summer time. Did you ever go to the school playgrounds and participate in that––
MR. STORY: Yes, we did. Matter of fact the playground that I went to was over when we went to Glenwood and they had movies every other night. I remember asking Daddy for three cents and it’s the first time my daddy ever turned me down and I didn’t know why. The movie cost three cents. But a lot of the other kids didn’t have three cents either, but they went over there and went in the back way to see the movies, but I didn’t and Daddy turned me down so I didn’t go that night and years later he told me. He said, “That was for my lunch at the plant. Jerry, that’s to pay for my milk and a cookie out of the machine.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have––Did you do any sports when you were growing up? All playing and like that?
MR. STORY: In high school. Well, I went after football and I was in my junior year in Oak Ridge High School but it was when Coach Armstrong was there and I was 87 pounds and the first two days exercise was all right, but that fourth and fifth day, some were 130 pounds and they started using me as a football. I stayed there for about three weeks and I walked off. I quit. I was bruised and hurt. Of course, back then, you didn’t make your buddies see tears come out of your eyes. Boy, it hurt, but I turned my head and didn’t let them see me cry. But I quit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you visit the swimming pool very much?
MR. STORY: I did, once a week during the summer time. We had a good time. I got to the point where I could dive in the swimming pool on the side by the diving board and go all the way around or halfway back under water.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the family have a telephone in those days, in the early days?
MR. STORY: We did later on in 1952.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You had a party line?
MR. STORY: We had a party line. We’d go and talk to somebody. We didn’t know who it was or we’d hear a girl in the background. “I’ll meet you at Jefferson Drug Store in about 10 minutes,” and so we just got on there and talked and we had a party line like you said. A long ring was our ring to answer the phone. Two short rings was the neighbor’s and one ring was another neighbor’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now down in Jefferson, the size of the movie theater, they also had bowling lanes up there, didn’t they?
MR. STORY: Right. It’s called the [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever bowl any in those days?
MR. STORY: No, I just wasn’t interested in it and plus the fact, I didn’t have a whole lot of money to bowl. But some of my buddies worked there, but the bowling pins some of them got their legs busted up pretty bad because they had to raise them legs up and that was back when the Wayne Theater moved in too. The Wayne Theater come in over there and that was a big deal for that end of town and on Saturdays you’d go in there and get you a Coke for five cents and they had five different flavors. A Coke cup would fall down. Boy that was something else watch that cup fall down by itself.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Ice come into the cup?
MR. STORY: Ice come into the cup and we’d get us a suicide. Now a suicide drink is very special. Now they had five flavors. We’d push all five, but we called it a suicide drink. Now all mixed up and you’d go in the Wayne Theater to sit down and your feet was––It’s where the last people who brought their Cokes in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All that going on.
MR. STORY: The sugar and syrup.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type movies do they show at the Wayne Theater?
MR. STORY: Well, they showed the Distant Drums and I worked with it, Distant Drums.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that a Western?
MR. STORY: Yeah, Distant Drums with Gary Cooper and that was such a good movie, I still think of it a lot and of course, they had the cartoons. We had all the cartoons and––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now did you go to the Grove Theater very much?
MR. STORY: No, not really, until I grew up and started dating and then I––
MR. HUNNICUTT: In high school, what type of classes did you take in high school?
MR. STORY: High school? I’d say Biology. Of course, some of the required was English, History, Math, Geometry––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like high school?
MR. STORY: I did, but Geometry, I wasn’t too bright on that. That was a little hard for me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of your teachers’ names, do you remember?
MR. STORY: I had Miss McGee, Mr. Atkins, Mr. Plumlee was my science teacher. Mr. Atkins was my English teacher. They were all good people back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is Mrs. Stansbury there?
MR. STORY: Miss Stansbury. She was my English teacher in my senior year. She was a very good teacher. She was funny, but she was a good––
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was the way she talked, wasn’t it?
MR. STORY: Well, she had false teeth and she had to take her tongue and pushed on the front like this and I don’t mean to make fun of her. I loved her every bit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I had her as well. I remember.
MR. STORY: And she told me one time, she said, “Jerry, you’re a good kid but you’re just going to have to straighten up. You’re going to have to give a book report.” So, I never gave a book report and I was a senior in high school because I still try. So I went over Downtown and I think it was McCrory’s. I went in and bought a comic book on Treasure Island. So I had flipped through that night and got all the basic parts and did you know everybody in that class clapped for me? I was so proud. I was telling them how Captain John had that one leg and told him that he was a sot. I mean I had the class [inaudible]. Made an 80 on it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year did you graduate?
MR. STORY: 1959. It was the last year that the class graduation was made at Oak Ridge High School. After that there was so many, they started having it at Blankenship Field.
MR. HUNNICUTT: During high school, did you date very much?
MR. STORY: No. Even my senior prom year, I went to the church prom down at Robertsville. I didn’t date.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your family had church orientated quite a bit in those days?
MR. STORY: Right. They grew up at Primitive Baptist back in the country.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me earlier about we were talking about alcohol in Oak Ridge.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you told me a little story about your daddy. You want to tell me about it?
MR. STORY: That’s on Hill Top. Sometimes on Saturday, Daddy put us two boys in the car. Mother never knew where we were going and we finally figured that out like years later, but we’d go up to Hill Top and there was a gate there and the guards knew Daddy personally.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Before you go any further, tell the audience that may review this, where Hill Top was located.
MR. STORY: Hill Top is top of Illinois Avenue going towards Oliver Springs and about a quarter of a mile actually past Hill Top, there was a gate there then and the guards knew my father and knew some other men too and we would go about a quarter of a mile down the road there and they’d be an old gravel road and Daddy would turn right and go down there less than a quarter mile to an old grocery store and he said boys, you all come in, so naturally we would because every time we went, they’d give us licorice or something and it was free. Couldn’t believe anything free and so daddy would go in there and buy a pint of liquor. The man was actually a moonshiner. I mean I hope I don’t get criminal for saying this, but in going there about two or three weeks and get some. We’d go with him because we got that free candy and that same summer, Daddy made homemade brew up in the attic at the TDU house and us boys outside playing sheep and marbles at the end of the house where it was shady in August, and kept hearing something going bloop. What smell was that? Boy, it stinks. What is that? We finally figured out where it was coming from and we told Daddy. “Oh, that’s nothing, boys. Just don’t worry about it.” So Mom and Daddy went shopping or something one afternoon, so us boys said let’s get up in the attic and see what that is. Back then it was just a square hole, so we got ourselves and we found that old brew up there. We was just a boy and there was a cup laying there so we started drinking that stuff and it was hot. Oh, we got dizzy. Oh, boy. Ooh, I fell and skinned my knee. We went out in the shade and just laid down in the grass and we thought we was going to die. I mean, first time tried drinking.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell us how you and Ray got that––
MR. STORY: Red top––About a month later, Daddy bottled it in the kitchen and after that he told us he made it. He’d buy red top. Red top––It was a syrup and yeast and boy it just stunk when making it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Made home brew.
MR. STORY: Made home brew and it was good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did he get the liquor back in through the gate?
MR. STORY: He’d come back the same way he went in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They not search or look for it because they knew him?
MR. STORY: Yeah and I think Daddy would see some of his buddies down there to be with so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, do you remember in 1945 when they dropped the bomb? Do you remember that event?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you?
MR. STORY: In 1945, I was 5 years old, but I remember Momma hugging me and shouting. She had the radio on and I remember Momma holding me and swinging me around. It’s over with and so, I really was still too young to realize what was going on, but I could tell it was a happy time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now in March of ’49, they opened the gates to the city. Do you remember that event?
MR. STORY: Yes, I sure do. Matter of fact, we was there. In ’48, down on Warehouse Road, they had the Freedom Train. In ’48, we went to visit the Freedom Train. Do you remember that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, it was on the track right where the steam plant was where Prop’s Hardware and Section Group is today.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. STORY: And it was from Germany. It had a German igloo and why they––We fought the war with Germans, fought against them and I’ve often wondered why the Freedom Train was German. I never did find out, but there was a lot of people that turned out to see that. I’ve got some pictures of the Freedom Train, but I’ve done gave them to the Historical Society.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they gave a little literature out in a book which I’ve got. I don’t remember much about it. But––
MR. STORY: Oh, good. Yeah, I was a little bit young and then so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: When the gates opened though, did you go to the parade?
MR. STORY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you stand to see the parade?
MR. STORY: We stood up at the bus stop at Jackson Square. Mother and Daddy put me on his shoulders and that’s where it was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now that would be on Tennessee Avenue right there across from where the post office used to be?
MR. STORY: Right, used to be. Exactly and the bowling alley was there underneath the Gran Rex Building back behind the Soup Kitchen now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. So, what do you remember who was in the parade?
MR. STORY: That, I think my eyes, me and my brother were picking at each other so I don’t remember a whole lot of that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a lot of people there though?
MR. STORY: A lot of people. It was crowded.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know they had a lot of Hollywood stars that came and Rod Cameron, the––
MR. STORY: Yeah, Rod Cameron. Sure, I do remember Rod Cameron. He was in the movies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now the same weekend on Friday, they opened the museum down at Jefferson in the old cafeteria building. Do you ever go to that American Museum of Atomic Energy there?
MR. STORY: Very often. Because we lived on Jefferson Circle and when we collected arrowheads and pottery at the steam plant where it is now, we donated the stuff that we found and the reason why we found it in the spring time so easy, the farmer where they would plow, they’d plant corn later and he’d let us in there in the summer time, in the spring, after he plowed it, but after he’d plant his seed, we was not allowed in there. We can see why because it would kill his crop and we rode our bicycles to the old white bridge at Edgemore and it was a wooden bridge and you could still––When the cars come across, you could still hear it what we call, there goes the tater wagon across the bridge. When it thunders and lightning, we called it tater wagon because it go click, boom and I think that was a good time. But we rode the bicycles over and find pottery and we didn’t keep them. For some reason, we gave them to the Atomic Museum and they took them. They’d been a lot of work and a lot of money, but like you said, money is not everything in life. But we gave it all to the museum potteries. We found props, arrowheads, different kind of articles.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What all do you remember was in the museum at that time?
MR. STORY: The best part that we remember is making our hair stick up on that electronic ball. You put your hands on that ball and they’d turn the power on and your hair would stick straight up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Van de Graff.
MR. STORY: Is that what it was? And they had a mirror there so you could see it and it was fantastic. Then they showed atoms and they showed Einstein. As you know, I don’t think there’s anybody in this world that don’t know Einstein. He was a very brilliant person. I understand when I watched the History channel about a month ago, they inspected his brain and part of his brain was so much different than the average human that it was unique.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever get a radiated dime at the museum?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They used to radiate dimes.
MR. STORY: I didn’t know that. But we did play with mercury.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you get your mercury?
MR. STORY: At the creek I swam in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You didn’t know that in those days though, did you?
MR. STORY: No. We swam in it, played Mike Fink in it. We’d go down behind Robertsville. That creek come up to my throat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But the mercury was in the thermometers in those days, right?
MR. STORY: Right. We’d bust the thermometers to get it out and roll it in our hands, shine our nickels down with it. Played with it and it was very dangerous. I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled of it or licked it or anything, but––
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think you had to heat it and get the fumes before it bothers you.
MR. STORY: Okay and so, I was told one time if I didn’t glow it, don’t worry about it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, after midnight we do.
MR. STORY: So, I turned out all right in my life.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you graduated from high school, what did you do?
MR. STORY: Well, I was working at the Boy’s Club at the time and A&P Store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was it located?
MR. STORY: A&P Store is where Downtown Hardware was but up on top, next to J. C. Penney.
MR. HUNNICUTT: On the corner there.
MR. STORY: And so at mid-summer, I joined the Army. I went to Basic Training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for eight weeks. Then I was off two weeks for Christmas and I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, Armor Training. I was in tanks and burning crosses broke out and so they froze us, but we can’t train. We kept training because if they needed us, over in Berlin, in case the war broke out again, we’d be ready to be shipped over there. So until this date, I’ve not been past the Mississippi. I thought I’d get to see a little bit of the world if I joined the Army, but I was stuck at Fort Knox 255 miles away from home. But I got a––The military changed my life. It really did. I grew up in a hurry. I had respect for everybody. I just loved my family better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you came back to Oak Ridge after the Army?
MR. STORY: I came back to Oak Ridge and I stayed here and I never got on to the plant, but I finally went into retailing and worked for a big department store in Oak Ridge and stayed there for 23 years and then after that, I went to Decatur, Tennessee, and run an Ace Hardware Store. Been there for five years and it was 55 miles one way. I’d leave the house at dark and get home dark and I had three kids. Three kids still in school, so I had to do what I had to do to put beans on the table and clothes on their backs and so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your wife?
MR. STORY: I met her at that department store where we both worked. She’s from Pulaski, Virginia, God’s Country. Rolling hills you wouldn’t believe. You could sit there on her mother’s back porch, out there in the country with a pair of binoculars and see a deer coming 5 miles along the [inaudible]. It kind of reminded you of the picture of the Germany during World War II, [inaudible]. Because there’s several farms up there and most of the farmers were German people and the Civil War was supposed to follow through there too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now what department store did you work at in Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: It was called Value Mart. Watsons in Oak Ridge had a store on Market Square for years and so they finally put a store in here called the Value Mart. Years later, they changed it to Watsons.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where is that located?
MR. STORY: It was located where the Little Ones used to be, Jackson Square, 125 Broadway. I think Jacobs Engineering was there now and they had upstairs and downstairs which is very unique for a department store and that was before Wal-Marts and K-Marts and we used to have traffic jams up there on Saturdays. I mean we would sell merchandise you wouldn’t believe. We sold a lot of salvage. I’d go buy salvage in Newark, New Jersey, Texas. They’d fly me to Florida and buy stuff that was fire damaged, smoke damaged, water damaged. Sometimes I’d have clothes in on the back of them trucks and the water was just actually bursting out the back of them trailers coming home. But we’d put fans on it and so we’d find our price and gave the customer a real good price and I met a lot of friends and a lot of people in Oak Ridge by working there and I still remember a lot of them and a lot of people would still have some of that merchandise that I used to sell there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now it was later changed to Watsons.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then did that just kind of bring the items up to a little bit different level or––
MR. STORY: Yeah. Our retail was in between Loveman’s and Belk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now Loveman’s moved downtown and back to the new location.
MR. STORY: Right. So, our retail price was between Loveman’s and J. C. Penney, I think that’s what––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Most people in Oak Ridge remember you from the Value Mart and Watsons for many years and the service that you dedicated to them.
MR. STORY: Yeah. I sure was. Mayor Bissell would come in every once in a while and talk to me, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you lived in a flat top across the street from him up on Meadow Road, didn’t you?
MR. STORY: Yeah. When I was a boy with Keith, his son and so, like I said, I had a good childhood growing up, after the gates, I started to go hunting and fishing with Daddy and it was unreal. One summer by the way, I need to put this in. Wiltshire Drive––We climbed that mountain and we’d walk over across the mountain and to back behind the Garden Apartments. We’d figured out one summer how to get from that top of that mountain to the bottom of that mountain without touching the ground. From tree to tree to grapevine to grapevine and it took a lot of engineering to do that, but we figured it out. I mean that’s all we had to do back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You was the tars in Oak Ridge, wasn’t you?
MR. STORY: I tell you. We’d sleep out in them woods and had us a good time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how many children you have, Jerry.
MR. STORY: I have three beautiful children. My oldest is Felicia Story. I love her to death. I was 10 foot tall when she was born and I still am. She lives here in Oak Ridge. She works at Jefferson Junior High School as a bookkeeper. She works for a real estate company and she’s got a business on her own. My second one, Jerry Brooks Junior, named after me. I was 10 foot tall when he was born. He works in Knox. He oversees the houses being built for Saddlebrook Homes. He is such a fine man. He’s got two of my grandbabies. Then Karrie, my baby, she played basketball at Oak Ridge High School. She got a scholarship to go to Roane State. She blew her knee out the second year, so that took care of that. There were several other colleges looking at her, but that just didn’t happen. I have got an ad in there with Karrie’s picture on it playing basketball and it says unleashed. Karrie works for Oak Ridge Urology. She has two that are my grandbabies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you tell me what your wife’s name was?
MR. STORY: Freeda. Freeda Kathleen, maiden name Quesenberry and we’ve been together this May, 50 years. That means that she’s put up with a lot with me, but I love her to death. She is precious. She is the joy of my life.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when did you retire from working?
MR. STORY: When I retired? About three years ago. I still have a lot of years. I might still go back to work. I’m not one to sit down.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Does your wife work?
MR. STORY: Yes. She stayed home to take care of the kids and they turned out beautiful. We never had one bit of problems out of them. She is a remarkable person. She kept them in line while I was at work. We’re enjoying life with them, my daughters and son and my grandbabies. We’re a very close knit family. Always have been and we always will be. She kept other children in our home. She now keeps our grandchildren after school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve got a couple of places I want to mention. You tell me what you remember about them, The Snow White Drive-In.
MR. STORY: Snow White Drive-In. Man, that was the drive-in. Snow White Drive-In as I remember, the most popular thing at Snow White Drive-In was to see how many times you could go around it in your car on one Saturday night and I mean that’s what we done. You’d [inaudible]. I don’t know [inaudible] I still remember him. He was a beautiful person. He treated everybody the same. It didn’t matter if you was poor, rich or ugly, fat. He treated everybody the same.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Snow White Drive-In located, do you remember?
MR. STORY: The Snow White Drive-In, let’s see now. Back where the bend where close to the hospital and the [inaudible] out there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s about where the entrance of the hospital is, I guess. Isn’t it?
MR. STORY: Yeah and the Chrysler place across the street from where the Chrysler place is now and then the Rabbit Drive-In.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now tell about the Rabbit Drive-In.
MR. STORY: The Rabbit Drive-In was the drive-in. Chopped ham sandwich, oh man. That was good. I always got a chopped ham sandwich and a pineapple milkshake and they’d see me coming. They’d already start making it because that’s what I ordered and they had car hops. The girls would bring it to us in our car.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the lady that used to manage that?
MR. STORY: No, I remember the car hops though.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She had a son named Jack Daily. We called him Jack Rabbit, but she was a short, little skinny lady that we used to call Ma Rabbit.
MR. STORY: Ma Rabbit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She was the, reminded you of the Beverly Hillbillies, Granny.
MR. STORY: Okay. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s who she remind me of.
MR. STORY: Tough.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: Tough.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She really ran that place really good and that’s where everybody used to hang out if you remember.
MR. STORY: How about that? And we did, Halloween night. One time we went and got 18 pumpkins off of porches. We would put them on that brick wall. He kicked the spoon, fold it up, it says Jerry. They knew us by our first name. The police did. “Where did you boys get them pumpkins?” “Off of some porches.” “Take them right back.” We couldn’t figure out where they all went, but we put them in the car.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the Sky Way Drive-In theater?
MR. STORY: The Sky Way Drive-In. We lived on Jefferson Circle then and the Sky Way Drive-In we’d ride our bicycles out there and go in the back and watch a free movie and then one Sunday, Daddy bought me a car for $35.00, had running boards on it. Boy, I wish I still had that car. You could put nine to 10 people in there because in high school, we would have air raids, not fire alarms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Air raid drills?
MR. STORY: Air raid drills. Okay. So, Oak Ridge is bombed. I had 11 people assigned to my car. I was not allowed to go home. I was not allowed to go to the plants where was Daddy was. We was supposed to go to Oneida.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jellico.
MR. STORY: Jellico. We could not go home. We couldn’t––We was instructed to do that and everybody went to the cars that they assigned to you. That car was––looked like a horse. But boy, it burnt oil like crazy. I mean, I put a filling station in that’s a direct filling station in Jersey. Fill it, put oil and check the gas. That was funny.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you could buy Old Buck Oil for a quarter back then.
MR. STORY: Well, we carried a five gallon can in the back. We was going to Clinton one night. Let me tell you. We was going to Clinton one night, way down on Jefferson and we’d go out on the Turnpike in the month of August. The wind wasn’t blowing. I made a trail you wouldn’t believe. Well, Zeek, the police officer pulled me over.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Zeek Campbell.
MR. STORY: Yeah, pulled us over here at Elza Gate to the underpass. Says, “Jerry, where you all going?” “We was going to Clinton.” “You ain’t going to make it. Look at the smoke behind you.” He said, “You get right back home right now.” Well, we filled it up with oil again and went back down the Turnpike and then when we come down the Turnpike, the oil burning thing was still there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The smoke was still there?
MR. STORY: And we made another smoke train all the way home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were spraying for mosquitoes is what you’re doing, wasn’t you?
MR. STORY: It just lingered. Everybody was laughing before that. We said we wasn’t mean. We was just mischief and another thing I need to bring up, we used to catch flying squirrels on Louisiana Avenue. Pets would––We’d actually put them in our house until Momma found out and we’d keep them in pillowcases that we found. Momma found out one time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A squirrel in a pillowcase?
MR. STORY: And so and after Boy Scouts, see, I was a good boy, but I was mischief and we’d go to Louisiana Avenue, put those kudzu vines on us and walked down the middle of the street. Cars would slam on their brakes and we’d tie hub caps to the string and throw it out there, run. Cars would stop and get out and look and we’d pull and make a little noise and they’d go up and look at it and they reach over and pick it up. We’d pull it and take off and we’re just shaking. So, Detective [inaudible] caught us that night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: See, in those days, fun was fun. It wasn’t––
MR. STORY: Until it was stump dump.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, tell me about where the stump dump was.
MR. STORY: The stump dump is up there top of Louisiana Avenue. That is four houses built back in there. That’s where people went to park.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Went on their afternoon.
MR. STORY: They went Thursday and smooched in, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh. Ooh.
MR. STORY: That’s what I said. So after Scouts one night, we slipped up there and peeled a potato and put in the exhaust pipe and we backed off and see everybody, all the stores back then was closed by 5:30, 6:00 and it was quiet up there and the Turnpike’s a long ways from there, okay? That guy started the car and it went grrr, third time, grrr, caboom. Blowed a hole in the muffler. That car, brrr, he rode, went there and looked out. It was one piece of ride. And he went down Louisiana, brrr, got on the Turnpike way down there. He heard him all the way up to the stump dump. Grrr and we’d be hearing him put his brakes on the stump pots, brrr. And see, we wasn’t mean. We was just mischief.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The policemen back in those days pretty much knew all of the boys and––
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And they didn’t allow loud mufflers in those days, did they?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: So, but they picked him up. But anyway, that was a very good growing up I had and we all had fun. We didn’t do destructive set up. We just down to earth little boys. We just had a good time. Matter of fact we still talk about it. Me and my buddies and like I said, I’m getting to the age now where I’m enjoying it better and I tell my boys when we went to the high school reunion three years ago, I told them, “Boys,” I said, “Boys, you know, we used to be pretty, what happened?” And back then we’d camp out in the yard and all that good––Back then you could look up in the sky and see shooting stars and you could see the Milky Way. You couldn’t do that now. It’s too much pollution around here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We could spend all day talking about early days in Oak Ridge.
MR. STORY: Amen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was such a safe place to live.
MR. STORY: Exactly, but we were poor and didn’t know it. Like I said, I seen Momma take scraps and we made it. We managed. Everybody––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody seemed to help each other.
MR. STORY: Everybody helped each other. If you needed help, boy, those neighbors got there on the spot. Or if they needed any help, we were right there on the spot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you can think of?
MR. STORY: Not that I know of except the pontoon bridge out by where the dam is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, White Wing Bridge?
MR. STORY: White Wing Bridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the White Wing Bridge.
MR. STORY: The White Wing Bridge out there we used to go out there and throw rocks at cars. They’d come up next to the lights and we’d touch snag it with the hooks. Never did catch one, but we had fun doing it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now that was a popular fishing spot at night off the bridge, wasn’t it?
MR. STORY: It was, had lanterns out there. Fishing people catch fish and they asked us boys, do you all want these fish? Catfish, crawfish, no, we don’t want them. So we just go back home and the draw bridge would float up when the water go and float back down. It was a very unique smart move to make a bridge and it was a military bridge because when Colonel Grove come in here, they said when he talked, you listened. He got the job done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Exactly. Jerry, how do you see the city as progressed over the years that you’ve been here?
MR. STORY: I’ve seen the city grow a little bit and I have seen the city improve itself. As people change positions at the city of Oak Ridge, there is more and more educated people than there used to be and they were very elite people. I think of them doing a very good job, seem to me. I don’t know the back door stuff or the front door stuff either as far as that goes, but I do know that it is improving because you have all the updates in this Oak Ridge area. Now there are some bad sites and there are some good sites.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you think the most amazing thing you’d ever seen in your life?
MR. STORY: Amazing thing?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: Miracle. When I worked in Decatur, Tennessee, I’d seen a miracle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was that?
MR. STORY: I was––I drove down there 55 miles one way. Let me tell you. That sun hit my face in the morning going west and I seen a miracle. I seen my mother walking behind me in my car on Highway 58 and behind my mother, there was an angel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That is a miracle.
MR. STORY: That is a miracle and to this date, I go back every July 4th and sit at the cemetery and talk to my mother and daddy and my buddies. Some of us you couldn’t talk to anybody dead. I said I do. Sure do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, this is just a little bit of your experience living in Oak Ridge.
MR. STORY: Exactly. I got a lot more.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But what an experience. If you hadn’t lived in Oak Ridge, you can’t understand how it was. It really was quite unique than anywhere else.
MR. STORY: Right. It was very different because we had three fences around us. We couldn’t leave and we was poor and didn’t know it, but we appreciated what we did have. We didn’t know we was poor.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s certainly been my pleasure to interview you and––
MR. STORY: Hey, read this.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview undoubtedly will certainly give someone an overview of how it was in those days and––
MR. STORY: But it was pretty good and like I said, Dave, the interview and I have books which I’ve got, tapes and books, the history of Oak Ridge, but what did us children do growing up here and we done with what we had. We didn’t go buy stuff because we couldn’t afford it. If we couldn’t figure it out, then we’d go buy a tool. But we always tried to figure it out because my father taught me that. Figure it out, Jerry. Don’t do it right now. Find somebody that what can you do it and help you do it without a tool. If you can’t, well then go get it and if you don’t have cash for it, don’t buy it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, it’s been a real pleasure for me to interview you.
MR. STORY: Hey.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve learned things that I didn’t know and I’ve been here all my life too. But Oak Ridge is just a unique place.
MR. STORY: Very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And I thank you very much for letting us come into your home.
MR. STORY: Hey.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And take this time to do it.
MR. STORY: Hey, you’re all welcome here anytime. But remember this. Come in the back door. My friends come in the back door. They leave in the back door and I promise you if you’re hungry, you won’t leave hungry.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Thank you, Jerry.
MR. STORY: You’re welcome. You all want something to eat?
[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this interview were edited at Mr. Story’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]

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ORAL HISTORY OF JERRY STORY
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 27, 2013
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 27th, 2013. I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Jerry Story, 108 Aspen Lane, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take his oral history about growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Jerry, please state your full name, place of birth and date.
MR. STORY: Okay. My name is Jerry Brooks Story. I got the name Brooks from my great, great uncle Sam Brooks. My birth date is 1940, Paducah, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Give me your father’s name and place of birth and date, if you recall.
MR. STORY: Okay. My father’s name is Willard Griffin Story. His nickname was Bobby and he was born in Paducah, Kentucky, on a farm between Paducah and the Kentucky Dam in 1909.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother’s name, maiden name and place of birth and date.
MR. STORY: Mary Lynn Story, 1913, in Paducah, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her maiden name?
MR. STORY: Mary Lynn Alexander.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your grandparents’ names and birth dates on your father’s side?
MR. STORY: Okay, on my father’s side? My grandfather come from England in 1886 and he brought his sister, which is my great aunt and they lived in Paducah on a farm and they had 13 children, 10 brothers and three sisters. The Story farm is still there and there was a lot of memories growing up and going back to Paducah to see the farm and work the farm because they raise––he raised strawberries, my granddaddy did, tobacco, soy beans and hogs for a living for the 13 kids that he raised on that farm.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s side of the family?
MR. STORY: My mother’s side was Alexander. My granddaddy he came from England too and my grandmother. Her name was Murt. Back then, that name sounds funny, but back then that’s the way the names really were. Murt Alexander and we used to care about that and they lived on a farm for several years, but they finally got old enough where they couldn’t manage the farm, so they sold the farm and moved to Paducah and she had two sisters and one brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the reason why both of those families ended up in Paducah, Kentucky?
MR. STORY: No, I really don’t. I sure don’t because as you know when you meet somebody and marry them, it’s a mystery because you don’t know where their historical people came from or what their lives were.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father? Where did he meet your mother?
MR. STORY: My father met my mother at a basketball game. She played basketball in Sharp, Kentucky, and that was about two miles from Little Cypress from my granddaddy’s house. They dated for a while and they finally got married and had three children in Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history? What grades did he complete?
MR. STORY: Father went to a one room schoolhouse, grades kindergarten through 12th and he was a very intelligent person. He knew every date of the presidents of the United States. He could sit down and tell you what they done, how they done it. He was very educated. He was a smart person.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s history?
MR. STORY: On my mother’s side, she was very smart too and she made A’s in school. In her senior year, back then, they made a special trip to Denver, Colorado and that’s a long ways back then in cars that wouldn’t go very fast and dirt roads, a few paved roads, gravel roads.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have sisters and brothers?
MR. STORY: I have one brother that’s younger than me and he lives here in Oak Ridge and I’ve got one sister that’s older than me that lives in Dyllis, back behind K-25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What are their names?
MR. STORY: My sister’s name is Rita, R-I-T-A Dell Manning Story and my brother is Lynn Ed Story.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were growing up in Paducah as a young boy, what do you remember it like a typical day was like?
MR. STORY: Well, I was only three years old, so my memory is kind of dull, but I do remember riding the buses all the time and going to Walgreens on Saturday to eat a hot dog. Daddy always took us to Walgreens to eat a hot dog with sauerkraut on it. We looked forward to that and that was really a treat because we didn’t have much and back then, we lived in Paducah. Nobody in Paducah had running sewage. We still had out houses and I remember that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what did your father do for income for the family?
MR. STORY: Well, he worked at a shoe factory in Paducah and there’s a lot of history in Paducah. Paducah back then though it was Indians that come to Paducah after the Ice Age and there’s a lot of history in Paducah. But anyway, they started building things on the [inaudible]. Lewis and Clark come through there and settled there for a year or two before they went out west and so Daddy got a job to help raise a family. He had the farm and he started working at the shoe factory making 25 cents a day and he told me one time that some mornings he’d get up and he’d eat peas that he grew outside of the window of his apartment. I don’t see how he did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what his job duties were when he worked there?
MR. STORY: No. I was still too young to realize it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother? Did she work?
MR. STORY: No. She stayed at home to take care of us children. Back then that’s just the way history was in ways everybody else done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did the family come to Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: Well, Daddy had heard that there were some openings in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he had never heard the name, but the tales was he could make more money. So Daddy got on a Greyhound bus and came down here to see if he could get a job on his vacation at the shoe factory. He applied for a job and got on. So they sent him to school out at X-10 and he stayed there for about a year and a half. At that time, us, and my mother would live on the farm. Daddy stayed there a year, here in Oak Ridge for a year or two. He come back and got us and we came down in 1943.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where he lived when he was here by himself?
MR. STORY: Yes. It was called the Huts. I believe that’s where Midtown is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And stayed in a hutment?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever tell you what it looked like, in a hutment?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall him ever saying where he went for employment when he first came here?
MR. STORY: No. He sure didn’t. He never did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the family––
MR. STORY: Oh, yes, I do. He went to the Gates. At Gate 25 and stood in line with the other boys because they were trying to get on too. I remember that now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when the family came to Oak Ridge a year later, how did the family get here?
MR. STORY: We came down on a Greyhound bus. My daddy had to have papers to meet us at the Gates and then we––My mother had to have papers to switch back and forth, papers to identify us and to identify him. Back then there was security breaches and we had to be very careful.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the first home?
MR. STORY: Our first home was Meadow Road. We attended Cedar Hill School. I went to first and second grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you lived on Meadow Road, what type of house did you live in?
MR. STORY: It was a flat top. Oh, the roads were still gravel. The flat top was a two bedroom and my brother, sister, mom, dad, and I lived in that two bedroom flat top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was the flat top heated?
MR. STORY: It was heated with coal. We had coal boxes, and once every two weeks, a coal truck would come around with conveyor belts and fill the coal boxes up. Those conveyor belts really made us boys just go out there and stare at it because it moved on its own. That was a good time to see something like that. We’d never seen anything like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you attended Cedar Hill. What grades did you attend at Cedar Hill?
MR. STORY: First and second.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of your teachers’ names?
MR. STORY: No. I sure don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like going to school?
MR. STORY: Yes, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, Cedar Hill is real close to Meadow Road, isn’t it?
MR. STORY: Right. As a matter of fact, it’s about 50 steps.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about, at Cedar Hill that you liked or disliked the most?
MR. STORY: Let’s see. That would be going outside and play.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Playground time?
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you went through the fifth grade at Cedar Hill?
MR. STORY: No, first and second.
MR. HUNNICUTT: First and second.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay and then where did you go to school?
MR. STORY: Glenwood.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now the family, I assumed, moved.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did the family move to then?
MR. STORY: You know, I don’t remember that road’s name now you got me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s out here in the east end of Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it, what type of house did you move into?
MR. STORY: It was flat top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it a two bedroom?
MR. STORY: Two bedroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you have a brother and a sister, you mentioned.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In a two bedroom flat top, it was kind of tight quarters, wasn’t it?
MR. STORY: There wasn’t much room. We just had to love each other.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what a flat top looks like inside.
MR. STORY: Well, a flat top when you go in, there’s no back door. You go in the front door. There’s a little bitty room called the living room and then you go to the right and it’s the kitchen and then you go to the left, there’s one bedroom and then down the little hallway, there’s another bedroom and us three kids lived in the back bedrooms. But the walls were so thin we all sung at night to go to sleep. Back then we were all in bed by 8 or 8:30. We didn’t have any entertainment.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what type of material was the flat top made out of?
MR. STORY: The flat top material, it was made mostly of plywood, but on top, there was, it was asphalt, I believe, or tar.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rubberized roof of some sort?
MR. STORY: Right. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: House was furnished, I guess, when you lived there?
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when your family came on the Greyhound bus, I guess your father had already got a flat top for you to live in, is that right?
MR. STORY: Right. Back then, you were gauged on what kind of job you had, to what kind of house you had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the family just brought personal clothing and some items and––
MR. STORY: That was it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Had to leave a lot back from where you were?
MR. STORY: But I remember the guards going through our suitcases very closely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So after you’re in Glenwood School, you attended the third through what grades?
MR. STORY: The third and then we moved again. We got around.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why you moved so much?
MR. STORY: Better location, closer to the stores because we walked everywhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the next home after Glenwood?
MR. STORY: Arkansas Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which was still out here in east end?
MR. STORY: Right, east end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And to a flat top out here?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two bedroom?
MR. STORY: Two bedroom and the evening sun would go in those three plate glass windows and my momma would cook supper, it would be boiling hot. Daddy got an idea to plant kudzu vines out in front of that flat top and it worked. One summer he planted kudzu vines. It grew up at that window over the roof and us kids would lay there at night and you hear that stuff grow. It would go flop, flop. It’d grow fast, flop, flop, flop. So, the house still stayed hot. Daddy got an idea, he made a self-lawn sprinkler and hooked the hose to it and put it on top of that flap top and turned it on and cooled it down for my mother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, where was the stove for heating located in the flat top?
MR. STORY: You know, I don’t remember. I really don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they cold in the winter time?
MR. STORY: Yes, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Hot in the summer time?
MR. STORY: Right. In some cases, you’d feel the wind coming through the cracks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mainly, it was just a plywood box with a roof on it.
MR. STORY: Right. Well, that was it. That’s the way the Government wanted it. It reminded you of––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Temporary housing.
MR. STORY: When I went to the Army, my barracks were like that. So, it reminded me of a building complex.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when you lived on Arkansas, how far away was Glenwood School?
MR. STORY: Oh, I’d say less than a mile because I remember getting out of Glenwood School in the afternoons, I’d go to the grocery store and wait on the bus that my daddy rode to work. He and I would have races when he got off that bus, I was sitting there ready for him. He would run up Arkansas, about four houses and of course, he’d let me win every time, but at the time, I didn’t know that. I thought I got him good. But he let me win.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you notice any difference in Glenwood School than Cedar Hill, do you recall any difference?
MR. STORY: No, there was no difference. But the seats, I started at the age where I started recognizing the teachers, their names, Miss Solos, Miss Watkins and they tried to teach us things that we didn’t know. I was a slow learner and I studied a lot and so, I learned quite a bit though because they took time to talk to me, to make me settle down, to realize what was going on in the classroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a lot of kids in the classroom?
MR. STORY: There was. There surely was. Boys and girls stuttered a lot. I kept my stuttering for several years after that but I had a good childhood growing up, but in some cases, the kids started making fun of me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how did you handle that?
MR. STORY: I handled it by being quiet. I wouldn’t speak up because I knew that they were liking me now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what a typical classroom looked like at Glenwood?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do. There was finger painting prints on the walls and at the time, they still do construction outside. I never would forget that sound because it was these jackhammers making a lot of noise. We would go outside and play. There was a lot of blue jays hollering and it was not a word. But I stayed quiet. I didn’t speak up like I should have.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you enjoy school during that time?
MR. STORY: I was kind of backward because of the shyness of my nature.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall having much homework when you went to Glenwood?
MR. STORY: No. I do remember though my lunch was in a brown bag and because the brown bag did cost much money. I think it’s a penny for five or something like that. We had to take care of that brown bag, but if it rained and we got wet, Momma would have to wrap our sandwiches in newspaper and tie it with a string. In the fourth grade for some reason, the teacher asked me if I’d like to work in the cafeteria and I said yes. So I went to the cafeteria on Monday at lunch time and I washed them dishes, emptied them trays and got a free lunch and let me tell you, that was a big deal back then. I was proud of that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work the whole remaining year you was in the fourth grade at the cafeteria?
MR. STORY: About every three weeks. I couldn’t wait until my time was coming again.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember, did they have a safety patrol when you were going to school?
MR. STORY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about that.
MR. STORY: Okay. After 1947, ‘46 and ‘48, they opened the gates in ‘52 and so in 1948, my grandmother and granddaddy come down here and we had to give them three months’ notice. I’m going backwards now. I missed something and so, three months’ notice, so ever who it was, went to Paducah and screened my grandfather and grandparents. They had to fill out papers and then we had to fill out papers and when they went back to the gate out here going to K-25, they got off the Greyhound bus. We passed the papers across to the guards and that’s when we first got our car. We’ve not run just every once in a while and because we had to push it off to get it started. But we swapped papers and my grandparents would come in and they’d stay about three or four days and they’d have to go back. They weren’t allowed to stay here a certain length of time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of car did the family have?
MR. STORY: It was a Dodge. We called it Betsy Dodge. Why that name come up, I have no idea, but I do know the police stopped Daddy one time on the Turnpike coming back from the garden we made that summer out at the riding academy on the west end of town. The police pulled Daddy over and us three kids was in the back and Momma was in the car and he said, “Do you know that you went 30 miles an hour on the Turnpike?” That was speeding and Daddy says, “This car won’t do 30 miles.” So, but he just gave the warning because he seen us kids back in the back. But us kids were crying.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned that visitors came to the K-25 gate and that’s the same gate the family came through, when they first got here, correct?
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I guess, if you came from the west, that would be where you’d enter.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And Elza is the gate if you was on the east end.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s strange. I never heard that the people that were coming to visit got interviewed for the game. That’s interesting to know.
MR. STORY: It is.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Security was really tight.
MR. STORY: It was back then and I remember and I keep [inaudible]. They opened up a drive-in theater. There was a gate, so I was eight years old and like I said, we were all in bed by 8:30, 9:00. For some reason, we stayed up late that night and Momma and Daddy let us go to see the drive-in. Of course, we didn’t have our money, so we just rode in the back. We weren’t mean. We were mischief, so we got in free that way for some reason that night, Gabby Hayes got on top of the projection both times and started to sing. So I went down there and for some reason, Gabby Hayes reached down and shook my hand. That tickled me to death and of course, we’d go to the movies and see Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes and Tom Mix and the Lone Ranger, sort of the old actors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For people that might view this interview, tell us a little more about Gabby Hayes. What kind of roles did he play?
MR. STORY: Gabby Hayes was in the movies with Roy Rogers. He was Roy Rogers’ sidekick. He was Roy Rogers’ cook on the trail, the old covered wagons. He always had food for the workers. Roy Rogers was a peace making person. He always caught the bad guys.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a cowboy?
MR. STORY: He was a cowboy 100 percent. Him and Gene Autry was our favorite ones.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s skip ahead a little bit. Do you ever recall going down to Middletown to the theater and seeing any of Western stars that came there?
MR. STORY: I did. Yeah. Cameron.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rod Cameron?
MR. STORY: Rod Cameron.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was here during the Gate opening ceremony.
MR. STORY: Right, exactly. Well, I remember him and he was well known in the movies back then. As time went on, we finally moved from Arkansas to Jefferson Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Before we get to the Jefferson Circle house––
MR. STORY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a typical dress was for a boy to wear to school. What was it?
MR. STORY: It was blue jeans, a shirt. I never had a store bought shirt until I was a freshman in high school. My mother made our clothes except the shoes and pants that we wore and then––
MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of shoes did boys wear in those days?
MR. STORY: Well, they were only some of them and I remember Daddy bought us some shoes at the plant, at the store out there and they had steel toes and in the winter time, that steel would get cold and freeze our toes off. We called them brogans.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s a term that you don’t hear much anymore is brogans unless you’re old enough to––
MR. STORY: That’s right and mackintosh. You could not wear––My daddy had a mackintosh ever since I knew him up until the day he passed away. Them old mackintoshes last forever and so, my mother knew how to manage. I knew––I remember my mother taking supper scraps and have them for dinner for the next day and they were delicious, maybe because [inaudible]. I don’t know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s talk about your father’s work. When he came to Oak Ridge, you said he worked at K-25 or he started at K-25? What did he do there, do you recall?
MR. STORY: He went to school. They sent him to school out at K-25 and he worked at K-25. I don’t know what his job title was at K-25. He worked there for about six months and they transferred him to after school to Y-12, where he worked in building 92-12 as a chemical operator and us boys we would always ask Dad, “What, Daddy what do you do during the day?” But he never would give us a direct answer and so, as time went on, we didn’t even ask no more. We just took it for granted. Daddy was going to work. You know, to make a living, so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many years did your father work at Y-12?
MR. STORY: Well, he started in ’43, end of year ’43 to ’79.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He retired from out there? Did you mother work any when she was here in Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: No. She applied at Y-12 and the interviewer told her if she would have taken chemistry in high school, she would’ve got on, but she didn’t do it. So, she just stayed home and raised us kids. One summer she did get a job at Philpot Dry Cleaners, down at Brunner’s. The Philpots were good people. Let me tell you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember when they had a store in Jackson Square?
MR. STORY: Yes. Sure do, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And so they had one in––Where was the other? Did you say?
MR. STORY: Brunner’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Brunner’s, down, oh yeah.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where Brunner’s Market is.
MR. STORY: And they had air raid once down there and us boys was curious. When that thing went up, how close could we get to it? Not very close. That air raid run for hours afterwards because that alarm went off. It went off in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why they sounded that alarm?
MR. STORY: That alarm was a test alarm. I did it a lot later when I went to high school. But that alarm went off every day at 12:00 and so us boys curious, mischief, not mean, would see how close we could get to it and it was not very close. So, we tried earplugs. Put cotton in our ears. That didn’t work. So, back then, that sounds dull, but us kids that’s what we done for fun. We done the unusual. We couldn’t afford toys. Daddy would make most of our toys and we had fun with them and when we did get a toy, we appreciated it and we took care of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And was your brother and sister born in Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: No, Paducah too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All at Paducah. Well, what do you remember about your sister? Is she the youngest?
MR. STORY: Oldest.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oldest. Did she boss you boys around or how did that work out?
MR. STORY: She was not headstrong like that. She’d play a game with us. We played Pickup Sticks with her. We played Jacks. Ball and Jacks and she beat us every time. She’d beat my pants off. I mean, telling you, I dreaded to go play with her later on because I never won.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, how do you play pickup sticks?
MR. STORY: Pickup Sticks. I got some under the couch because I taught my grandbabies. You get about 25 sticks which have sharp ends and you drop it and you pick up a stick. But if you move another stick, your time is over. So each stick counts five points and if you move another stick by picking that one up, you miss your turn, so the next person gets to do it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, what if you pick one stick up, can you take that stick and use it as a pick like by head?
MR. STORY: You could flip it like that or this way or you could push one end down and pick it up this way and––
MR. HUNNICUTT: So each stick is 5 points?
MR. STORY: Right and it’s a very interesting toy because you’re always thinking and you’re looking at the other guy. Look at how many he’s got.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you got to concentrate on what you’re doing.
MR. STORY: Exactly and marbles. Marbles, this thumb is still wider than this thumb where I shot marbles so much as a boy growing up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the rules of marbles?
MR. STORY: No Steelies. No do rows.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what steelies and do rows are.
MR. STORY: Steelies are a steel ball, ball bearing ball because the steelies will burst the marbles. No steelies, do rollers are about this big. They’d do the same thing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just to make a marble?
MR. STORY: Right. And then, if you shot a marble in there, if you was good enough, that marble will keep spinning and I got that good. It would actually drill a hole in the dust. That was great and I kept my marbles in a cigar box, but to get that cigar box, you had to be patient. I got my cigar box at Jackson Square Pharmacy. I went in there one day and I asked the clerk if she had seen a cigar box. She said, “Why sure”. So I went back a couple of days later, she had me three. Oh, I was cock of the world. I’ll tell you that was true. My buddies wanted one. My buddies wanted them. I know. I mean, I was greedy. I [inaudible] them boxes. I took them things home and put them under my bed and hid them and I kept my marbles in there too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Cigar boxes they had a lot of stuff in them. That was in those days.
MR. STORY: Right. Back then, why didn’t I keep that stuff and my comic books. Comic books was the thing on Monday night. Monday night was comic book trading night. After supper, everybody ate at the same time back then. Nobody missed supper. You bet to play basketball. Momma hollered Jerry, but you still played basketball. Jerry, second time, where are you? Jerry Brooks, wham, there’s still dust churning. Just floating because I knew to get in when Momma said that Monday night the boys come up. Sometimes these boys will have GI Joe comic books. Ooh man. I traded one time four of my comic books for that one GI Joe comic book. Boy, I was in hog heaven. Let me tell you. I started reading that GI Joe book and hid it under my mattress for about six or seven months before I brought it out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much did comic books cost?
MR. STORY: Three cents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where would you buy most of your comic books?
MR. STORY: Jefferson Drug Store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now let me back up to the marbles again. How big was the circle that you put the marbles in?
MR. STORY: It was about four feet. Now that’s a good size. I mean it was like this and it was right back here on the corner where the grocery store used to be. They had four shopping centers in Oak Ridge back then. I think the EAT Store, Jefferson, Grove Center, Elm Grove, one at the top of the hill here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Outer Drive?
MR. STORY: Outer Drive, Elm Grove.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Down here in East Village.
MR. STORY: East Village.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And Middletown.
MR. STORY: And Middletown and back then on Mondays and Thursdays were the rolling grocery store would come on the lane and Momma would get her sugar, flour and cheese.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a rolling grocery store looked like.
MR. STORY: A rolling grocery store nowadays looks like a school bus. But it had the engine and the hood sticking out, instead of the flat front of a school bus and it was the delight to get on there because boy, sometimes that driver would give us boys candy and that was a treat. So, it got to the point where everybody jumped from the bus first. Us boys didn’t get the customers run to get on there because we thought they would give us some candy and back then there were coal boxes. They’d wash them out in the summer time and sleep out of them, had a good time with them old coal boxes. They had a little door in the bottom. We didn’t use the top ones with the big lids. We’d go in the little hole because it was fun and we’d scare the mailman and just had a good time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How big was the inside of a coal box?
MR. STORY: It was about a four by four by four, something like that and the coal trucks come around every two weeks. My brother had to go out and get coal one night and I’d go out and get the coal the next night and it was coal furnaces.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you carry the coal in?
MR. STORY: In a coal bucket.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did they look like?
MR. STORY: It was a bucket that was about a foot and a half tall with a handle on it and had a scoop looking front and it doesn’t need us to get rid of the coal to throw it in the furnace.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Had a lip on it so you could get it in there?
MR. STORY: Well, it’s supposed to because Momma got us because we put a ash on the floor and you’d open that furnace up and that coal dust would just go all the way up to the ceiling, just row and so back then, we breathed it. And so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what the floor was made out of in one of those flat tops?
MR. STORY: No, oh yes. It was tile. As I remember, there was tile on the bottom on that grayish looking tile with single, with a piece of silver metal going across for the seams where they put it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it one piece like linoleum or something like that?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now what about the floor in the TDU?
MR. STORY: Oh, the TDU, as a matter of fact, the floor is still there. We moved in the TDU in 1952 and I think Dad bought that TDU for about $1,900 or $2,000 and so he rented the other side for a year or two, but they converted it over for a whole house, so us kids was raised in that TDU during our high school teenage growing up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back to the marbles a minute.
MR. STORY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did, where––Was there a marble rink that was down here in the East Village shopping area that––
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody gathered at?
MR. STORY: After school. Man, did we have, we looked forward to that and sometimes my brother would come home with his head hanging down like this and I’d get home first and Daddy would say, “Well, my son’s lost again.” My brother, but I never had that attitude, but I had put a plan and I lost some, but I won some too. And then one time I traded my marbles up for a boar head machete. Oh, a big knife. Ooh, man. I was in trouble. Daddy and Momma got on me and I had to take that machete back, but the boy wouldn’t trade it back to me. So, I had come back home with it and Daddy got rid of it someway or somehow.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever recall the guy that worked at the Oak Ridge Hospital that used to take over Carly Springs and make knives, throwing knives and axes out of?
MR. STORY: Axes, yes. I sure do. Matter of fact, he made me an ax one time and sharpened it out at the spring and my daddy made me a handle and we got so good at throwing them things, we could back off 10, 15 steps and throw it in a tree. It would go just like that, right into it because all we done back then was practice. We’d practice and practice and we had gotten good at it and yoyos. My brother won several awards at 20th year throwing them yoyos down, Walking the Dog, Rock A Bye Baby, Spaghetti Necks, all that good stuff. Man, we had contests and he won three or four trophies down there one summer. I was jealous. But I never did get as good as him. But I kept trying.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were shooting marbles, before you got your cigar boxes, what did you carry the marbles in?
MR. STORY: We’d carry them in our pockets. Matter of fact, I’d carry them so much that I wear our jeans out and Momma just put a patch on them. She didn’t tell us to get rid of the marbles.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many marbles did you have to put in the circle in the center?
MR. STORY: Sixteen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody put sixteen in?
MR. STORY: Sometimes four, sometimes five. And the big pot was sixteen, that big pot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you determine who shot first?
MR. STORY: You know, I forgot. I think we flipped a coin. I’m not sure. Oh, it was a holler “Firsty” and now I said firsty first. No, I did. Firsty’s. So––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever remember that brings a thought about playing ball and who gets to hit first and you take a ball and bat and you hold it up and you put your hands up to bat?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Handle and whoever.
MR. STORY: Just got to the top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then somebody would do something on the end and put your thumbs up or something.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t remember how that was.
MR. STORY: Did you have to go like that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. STORY: Yeah. I sure do with that. I sure do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the first person that shot marbles, I shot marbles but I don’t think I did it at the level you did, but you would keep shooting as long as you knocked the marble out of the circle, right?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you get so good at it, the marble hit and just died right there on the spot and then you continued to keep shooting it, right?
MR. STORY: Yeah, it’d spin.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’d spin.
MR. STORY: Because you had so much [inaudible] on it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now I always remembered a cherry marble.
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a favorite marble most boys had and they didn’t want to put it in the circle.
MR. STORY: Because you were afraid it’d get busted.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Where did you get your marbles? Do you remember?
MR. STORY: I sure don’t. It might have been at the––I think Daddy got me a bag at McCrory’s or––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Probably so. Five and 10 cent store.
MR. STORY: Five and 10 cent store and he split it with me and my brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But there was an art to shoot marbles, wasn’t there?
MR. STORY: Oh yes, sir. At first, I had a hard time before I got good actually. I got so good that some of the boys said, “I ain’t playing, Story.” I used to play with the marbles, bring them home and show them to Daddy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever carry the newspaper when you were growing up?
MR. STORY: Yes. After we moved from Markets over to Jefferson Circle, let’s see, I was in the fifth grade. I got a [Knoxville] News Sentinel paper out in the Garden Apartments.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Garden Apartments located?
MR. STORY: Across from––where the armory, where it used to be down on Jefferson Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where the Girl’s Club is now?
MR. STORY: Yeah. Across on the hill up there and it was every morning. That’s where I had to get up at 4:30 or 5 and I couldn’t afford a paper bag, so Momma made me one out of the awning material. I don’t know if you remember them outside chairs that you sit in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right. The canvas kind of––
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Material.
MR. STORY: Because the bags was 35 cents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I had forgotten about that. You had to buy the bag at first and then they would give you a bag later, didn’t they?
MR. STORY: Yeah. So I couldn’t afford it, so I just––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go pick your papers up?
MR. STORY: At the top of the hill on Vanderbilt and when we was sitting there, me and Tony Galardo was, I went to school with him. He had one on one side of the street and I had one with him. Women would be sitting there waiting on their papers and these women would bring their husbands out, two of them, two women and two men, different apartments and their husbands would lean up against the telephone post and they would be reading a book and the taxi cab would come by and pick them up. The taxi cab driver would go around and take his arm and put him in the back of the seat and we found out later on, that they were scientists at the plants. Yeah. And that was remarkable. We told everybody in town about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now was the Garden Apartments like they are today or was the––
MR. STORY: They was for the higher echelon, the Rigby. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The S and H Dormitories was gone by the time you delivered papers up there and the structure that’s there today is the way it was.
MR. STORY: Right, and then after we moved over to Jefferson Circle, the dormitories by the Boys’ Club, we’d climb in the attics and catch pigeons and I remember my first two pigeons, Little Top and Big Top. We’d catch them at night time with a flashlight and we’d take them home and build a cage for them and we kept them caged up for three weeks. We fed them and watered them and when we opened the cage, they automatically took off, but they come back about an hour or two later. They’d take off and come back. But we used to put them in shoe boxes and ride them with our bicycles to Jackson Square or Jefferson Circle on Saturdays and we’d have pigeon races. Our buddies would be back at their boxes in our backyard and we’d let the pigeons go exactly at 12:00 and they’d time us and time our pigeons and sometimes they didn’t come until the day after, but they always come back. We called them homing pigeons and so they started having babies, my pigeons and so the pigeons started landing on the neighbors’ houses and boy, did they mess in both sides. So that summer they had a good talk to me. “Jerry, you’re going to have to get rid of them pigeons.” The best test the pigeons are pooping up there are dissolving the roofs of the TDUs out behind us, so that year we had to, excuse me, and so but we had to get rid of them. Back then that’s all we had to do. Like I say, we was mischief, but we did trespass to get into the dormitories to get them pigeons.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there people living in the dormitories at that time?
MR. STORY: No, they was getting ready to tear them down. That was in ’53, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s talk a little more about the pigeons. What type of food did you feed them?
MR. STORY: I fed them corn, bread and water.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now was this cooked corn or––
MR. STORY: No, it was hard raw corn.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Raw corn?
MR. STORY: It sure was. I think Daddy got me some at the feed store. I forgot where the feed store was at that time. Of course, back then, my daddy and all his other workers that worked with him go to the feed store and they’d go in and sit around the old pot belly stove and tell jokes and lies and all the good stuff because I went with him one time and I didn’t want to go back. But––
MR. HUNNICUTT: You don’t remember where that was?
MR. STORY: It might have been in Gamble Valley, not in [inaudible] Valley. Where was that, the feed store?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember what valley?
MR. STORY: Gamble Valley.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Gamble Valley?
MR. STORY: Yeah, that’s where it was. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What––Tell me about a pigeon coop. What’s it look like and what is it made out of?
MR. STORY: A pigeon coop with chicken wire and a box about this wide and about this wide and on the end of it, we had wood and a perch and a hole about this big around and Daddy separated the boxes in there and some of the pigeons would go this way and some would go this way and some would go up here. He had holes up here and so, but [inaudible] on pieces of wood and done it automatically and we’d sit there for hours and just on the ground just watching pigeons, but in the summer time when that poop went through that chicken wire on the bottom, it stunk. But we had a good time, good feel and we had a good time with our buddies. Our buddies, like I said, we’d have pigeon races and it was good clean fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a lot of kids in the neighborhoods then.
MR. STORY: There was lots of kids because I remember playing in that creek across the Brunner’s right behind Robertsville. Back then there was a movie called Mike Fink, King of the River, and we had poles. We had a piece of plywood one time and we put inner tubes in them and tied them to it and we’d go down through there back behind Jefferson and under the bridge, under Oak Ridge Turnpike, down that road all the way down to Brunner’s. Mike Fink and then we’d pick them to go Avi rafts that we made and actually carry them back behind the Bus Terminal Road. On the roads for buses, but I never rode a bus but every couple of times, I did. But we always rode our bicycles all the way up to the high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of bicycle did you have?
MR. STORY: I had an Armaan, didn’t have fenders. So it had rained when we went to the high school. They did much streak up here and one back here and I’d stopped at Robertsville in the wintertime and combed my hair because back then we used Wildroot cream on [inaudible] and we put that stuff on our hair and Momma put a toboggan on me. Still yeah, she was taking care of me in high school and this part of the hair was sticking out and I actually had to stop and comb my [inaudible] out of my hair while a little cream on the top.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you carried a comb in your pocket?
MR. STORY: Yeah. I mean, I was big time. I thought I was. I was it on the stick.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, when you lived in Jefferson, what school did you go to after you left Glenwood?
MR. STORY: Okay. I went to Glenwood and Willow Brook but I went to fifth grade and I remember that year I stopped stuttering and I had more friends than a barrel of monkeys and I started learning stuff that I never learned before. Miss Ellis, she was a real strict teacher and I have got, I got spankings because I didn’t know my multiplication and Friday, boy, let me tell you by Monday morning I knew. Oh, man.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did they spank you with?
MR. STORY: She would spank my hand with the ruler and I’d jerk, you learn these multiplications now. I mean it and at the time it hurt my fingers, but as I growed up, I said, “Well, I’m glad she done that because I learned them.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember having to go to the blackboard and write something on the blackboard in front of the class or anything?
MR. STORY: No, because I wasn’t a good speller. I wasn’t a good speller then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have to stay after school and write I will not such as talk in class and things of that nature?
MR. STORY: Yes. “Jerry, you sit and you sit in that corner over there.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think [inaudible] school did.
MR. STORY: I thought my eyes were going cross-eyed sitting and staring at that corner. But it was fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have to write 100 times I will not talk in class or misbehave or whatever.
MR. STORY: Yeah. That was a year. After all that happened, my teacher signed me up to be safety patrol. Boy, I gosh, that made me feel so big and important.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well now, how was you distinguished being a safety patrolman versus the other students? What made you different?
MR. STORY: I––Because the teacher signed me up for it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Really?
MR. STORY: I thought it was––
MR. HUNNICUTT: And that were the appearance, did you wear anything that made you be a safety patrol?
MR. STORY: It was a belt, some tie thing, with a badge on it. Ooh, man, I shined. That was fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what were your duties as a safety patrol?
MR. STORY: My duties was down there where Bus Terminal Road is across the road from going up Jefferson Avenue to Robertsville Avenue to stop the cars, to let the students go across.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now let’s tell the viewer’s where Willow Brook School was located.
MR. STORY: Willow Brook School is located at Robertsville and Jefferson Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Same place it is today?
MR. STORY: Same place it is today.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you was the marshal across the street I guess, you’d say, to stop the cars?
MR. STORY: Man, I was in hog heaven. I mean I strutted like a Banty rooster. I thought I was something else.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: I’d stand there with a smile on my face and I’d go home and just smile and Momma would say, “Jerry, you’re happy, ain’t you?” I’d say, “Sure am, Momma.” Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about during the school, did you have duties to keep the kids in line or do anything inside the school during the day?
MR. STORY: No, it was just after school only.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But if you was out on the playground and something happened during the day, you had authority to take care of it?
MR. STORY: Yes, would report and when it was Flag Day, in May, us patrolman, safety patrol would get the bus like protect the nit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Also, did you ever collect lightning bugs and Coke bottles to school?
MR. STORY: Yes. And gave me two, I think it was five cents per fruit jar. The scientists at the plant wanted them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do with them? Where did you turn them in?
MR. STORY: I think it was at school, Willow Brook, and they came and got and collected them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much did you get for Coke bottles in those days?
MR. STORY: Two cents, maybe one in some stores.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now Coke bottles were returned because they re-used them.
MR. STORY: Exactly. Back in the days and when we drank our Coke bottle, we’d play Far Away.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about that.
MR. STORY: Well, we, Far Away. Sometimes we’d be able to afford a bag of peanuts and we’d put them peanuts in that Coke bottle. Oh, that’s how it would make it bubble and taste so good. But when you got to the end, by then everybody would look at each other. Let’s play Far Away and so on the bottom of that bottle is where that bottle was manufactured so every, got it, want it. That other guy had to buy your Coke, either then or later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It had the town and the state it was made in.
MR. STORY: Not on the bottom. Memphis, Rockwood, and let’s see. Morristown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know, there was a little trick to figure out which bottle was the furthest if you was going to pick one out of the carton, you know, that you hadn’t looked. If it had a lot of skin up places on it, it’d been around a long time. You’d pick that bottle. Remember that?
MR. STORY: They was white almost.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: About a stick wide. I did not know that. I’d learned something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what about, what do you remember about milk trucks coming to the house?
MR. STORY: Milk trucks, all right. Milk trucks would come to the house on Monday, oh, no, Thursdays. Yeah, Pet Dairies. Momma always bought Pet because and Pet Dairies would fill their truck up with ice and we’d always eat that ice in the summer time. Go out there to the milk truck and that old boy would give us a piece of ice and we’d put salt on it. Well, salt is not good for you, but boy, we had a time licking that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Put salt on the ice?
MR. STORY: Yeah, it was good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What’s that do for it?
MR. STORY: It just makes it taste better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve learned something there.
MR. STORY: Keeps it from sticking to your tongue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, keeps it from sticking to your tongue, I heard here.
MR. STORY: How about that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: We were talking about rolling stores earlier. They didn’t sell meat, did they?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was just vegetables and canned goods?
MR. STORY: Just vegetables and canned goods and downtown, Oak Ridge was at Jackson Square. Now when we lived on by Cedar Hill on Meadow Road, once a month everybody at Oak Ridge would walk down to downtown Oak Ridge. There was a grocery store down there. I know who run it, Bobby Mitchell, mother, daddy. I don’t know if you knew Bobby Mitchell or not, but he was the championship of Oak Ridge football with Jackie Pope and all them boys. But she was allowed to go down there with us three kids and the Government would allow her three pounds of cheese, a bag of flour and a bag of sugar. Everybody got it free once a month.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She had ration stamps?
MR. STORY: Right. Everybody had and Daddy would buy cigarettes there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where the grocery store was located in Jackson Square?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do. It is where University Insurance used to be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where Razzleberry’s––
MR. STORY: Where Razzleberry is––
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the community store.
MR. STORY: That was the community store and right around the corner was the Music Box across the street. What was his name?
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ll think of it in a minute.
MR. STORY: Yeah, Buddy. He was a good person. He had the Music Box and the old 45.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Pollard was his name.
MR. STORY: Pollard. He was a nice person because we’d see him every once in a while. He was kind of bald headed, but he was a nice person.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s talk about Jackson Square a little bit.
MR. STORY: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember some of the stores that were in Jackson Square and where do you remember they were located?
MR. STORY: Okay. First thought that comes in my mind is the theaters. There was a Ridge Theater and a Center Theater and back then, on Saturdays they had serials at the Center Theater.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You talking about movies?
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Not cereal you eat?
MR. STORY: No. But they had serials on there, which was––It was a treat to go see a movie. I mean yeah, a talking movie and so we’d walk or ride a bus. It was down to Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: From down Jefferson all the way up there?
MR. STORY: And there would be a line, if you’re looking at Center Theater nowadays which is the Playhouse, to the left, all the way down and back to stairways, by the Soup Kitchen, all the way back behind [inaudible] back then, there would be a line and the serials only last about 20 minutes, but we’d stand in line for almost two hours and to get into the theater, it’d cost us nine cents. That was a lot of money for us. We had to get a lot out of that Coke box. Of course, Daddy would help us every once in a while or Momma and so, you buy or brought a candy bar at the drug store down at the end of the street which the drug store looked like the fifties.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which drug store?
MR. STORY: By the Ridge Theater.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Service Drug Store?
MR. STORY: Service Drug Store. They had the black and white tile in there. It reminded you of the happy days really.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the happy days.
MR. STORY: It was the happy days for us because man, to get a cherry Coke, that was a treat too or a hamburger.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They had a fountain to the left.
MR. STORY: They had a fountain.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s where Big Ed’s Pizza is today.
MR. STORY: Exactly and boy oh boy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well now, Jefferson had one too.
MR. STORY: Exactly. We went in there a lot too. We would order––Let me tell you what us boys would order. We’d order a gag bomb and a pine float. Okay? Now a gag bomb back then, we called it a hamburger and a pine float was a glass of water with a toothpick in it and them waitresses would get so upset with us that they’d say, “Boom boys, leave us alone today.” We were stubborn, so they finally made us a gag bomb and a pine float and word got out about it, so almost everybody, all the [inaudible] started calling hamburgers gag bombs and pine floats and back behind Jefferson Drug Store, there was a big bank where the dumpsters or trash cans were and in the summer time, we would take a five gallon bucket and go behind the drug store and filled it with water and took it about seven or eight times and poured down that bank to make it slick.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Mud slide.
MR. STORY: Mud slide man and we would get us a piece of cardboard and slide down that thing. Oh, we had fun–– until we got home and our pants had holes in them and mud all over them and boy, did Momma get upset.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You don’t remember a––
MR. STORY: Until we got home and our pants was––had holes in them and mud all over them and boy, did Momma get upset.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which brings up a question, do you remember how your mother washed the clothes that you guys made?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do. Monday was wash day and I could not stay after school. “Come on, Jerry. Let’s go play football.” No, it’s Monday. I mean telling you, I would split to go home because Momma’s old wash water was still in that washing machine. It was first of the ringers and I’d empty that water with a sauce pan and throw it outside the back door. That [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just throw it out in the back yard?
MR. STORY: And then the reason why I was so fast and her ended up gone because I’d always find a nickel or a penny there. Oh, boy. I’d take it over to the drug store. That was a lot of money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Those were the days.
MR. STORY: Those were the days and then Momma had the pants stretchers to stretch our jeans out. I think I’ve got one set left up in the attic somewhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did she do that?
MR. STORY: To make them look like they were ironed. She didn’t have to iron them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when you put your legs in them, they stuck out to the side, didn’t they?
MR. STORY: Exactly. You’d have to loosen them up and the brogans I had on didn’t help either because they was––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, brogan is a laced up top shoe, isn’t it?
MR. STORY: Laced up top. It was heavy. It was steel toed.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And brogan was the name of the shoe, right?
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just an old clog busting looking shoe.
MR. STORY: It was and we’d kick clogs too. Man, because we all had gourds and them gourds was big. I tell you what. Daddy had a green thumb. I remember one time he had tomatoes on his vines, this big around. Bigger than sandwich size and had to use 2 x 4s to hold them on the vine because we’d go clean stables out, horse manure, sand from Melton Lake Drive from the river back then. Melton Hill wasn’t built so we could actually in the summer time walk all the way across that river from stone to stone and we got our bean poles over there. We’d chop them down for Daddy before. We done a lot. We all worked together. We didn’t fuss about it because we knew we had to pick berries or help can. In the spring time and the summer time, we’d go down to our neighbor’s house one week and help them can and they’d give us some of their food and then they’d come up our house and they help can and us boys would get in the house and get the fruit jars and wash them and dry them and pull the green apples to put them back. We’d put them on a paper towel and Momma would make fried apple pies and when Momma made fried apple pies, there would be people coming from miles around just to get them apple pies that my momma made. I mean she’d make five or six hundred. Even some of my relatives, they made special trips down here from Paducah and that’s about 300 miles.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And she’d put sugar on the outside of them after she took them out of the pan?
MR. STORY: Yeah. They were good, but I’ve got a recipe and I’ve been thinking about making some. But to dry them apples out was it took about two weeks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She made her own dough?
MR. STORY: Right. Yeah. She always had a business.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, who do you remember when you lived in Jackson where your mother did her grocery shopping?
MR. STORY: Grossinger was the best place, White Store. Because a White Store always had fresh and good looking meat. She always had good meat for our meals.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the Tulip Town Market there at Grove?
MR. STORY: I do, Tulip Town? I believe Tulip Town. Was it Tulip Town where CVS is now or where Sears used to be, I mean––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tulip Town Market? No, Tulip Town Market was always in Grove, oh, you talking about the White Store or another store?
MR. STORY: No, White Store was right there at Tulip.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, White Store came quite a few years later.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Into Grove.
MR. STORY: But that’s where she bought her groceries because she’d send me up there on the bicycle to get certain this, certain that and sometimes I’d buy the wrong thing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, now Jefferson had a grocery store in that area.
MR. STORY: EAT Store, I think I was 13 years old when I got my first job there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now where is the EAT Store?
MR. STORY: The EAT Store is where the meat market is now. What’s the name of it, J and J’s or something like that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: And that was my, of course, I had my paper route. But that was the first job. But to get my attention that Mr. Allen called mother to have me come into work that afternoon, we was camping out on Brookshire Drive. That was Friday nights and Saturday nights. We actually lived in the woods. That’s all we had to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you’re talking about the family or just you boys?
MR. STORY: Just boys and so, once Friday night came around and Saturday, we kept hearing all one. There’s an old road that goes around Brookshire Drive. There’s houses back then it wasn’t. But that one kept going on Saturday morning. So finally I heard my mother holler, Jerry. I finally heard her.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Came looking for you?
MR. STORY: Yeah, and I come running down through that road and there Mother was standing. “Mr. Allen called. You got your job, Jerry.” I was so excited that I left my stuff up there. Come find later the boys brought it home for me. But I started bagging groceries, me and Buddy Jones and so Buddy Jones passed away now, but he was 1 of my best buddies growing up here in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was a good friend of mine too.
MR. STORY: He was something. He had a good family. His sisters I knew them well because we went to church with him at Robertsville Baptist Church and back then Mother and Daddy went to Robertsville Baptist Church. But we helped on Saturdays. Us boys would help down there on Fridays and Saturdays in the summer time to help build that church.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now where was the church located?
MR. STORY: From west to east, it’s back this side of Robertsville School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Same place it is today?
MR. STORY: Right and would have been on the ground on––
MR. HUNNICUTT: So Mr. Allen owned the EAT Store?
MR. STORY: Well, he run it. He didn’t own the building.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. STORY: And he was from Florida. He always wore fancy pants. He was a golfer. We always looked for the yellow pants. We weren’t used to stuff like that. We found out some of my buddies would bring Coke bottles in and get money for them. One night I was throwing trash out in back of the EAT Store and there my buddies were. They were getting Coke bottles out of the back and bringing them in the front.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Stay on the Coke bottles?
MR. STORY: We weren’t mean. We were mischief and they was doing that. We didn’t stop it. That was funny.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In that same building upstairs, do you recall what was up there?
MR. STORY: No, I don’t. I remember the steps going up there. It was real skinny. I remember seeing Mr. Allen going up there, but I don’t know if that was his office or what. Well, although, he might have lived up there. I don’t know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how long did you work at the EAT Store?
MR. STORY: About a year and a half.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now down in the Jefferson area besides the EAT Store, they had a grocery store. What else did they have there?
MR. STORY: A sporting goods store, a barber shop, the drug store and the fire department and that’s where we learned to order our gag bombs and pine floats.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The sports store, what was the name of that store, do you remember?
MR. STORY: Sports something. I don’t know if Daddy had been there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Sportsman maybe?
MR. STORY: Yeah. That’s it because Daddy made them fishing headicaws [ph].
MR. HUNNICUTT: What is a fishing headicaw [ph]?
MR. STORY: A headicaw [ph] nowadays people don’t realize what it is. But it’s a lead head with a hook on it with and lead is a no-no now to fish in the lakes because the ducks give––got the hooks in their mouths and all that stuff and I can see why. But Daddy would order bear hair from Chicago and this bear hair was very rare and he’d color it sometimes in Easter egg dye and when you pulled the headicaw [ph] through the water, you could stop it and it’d bunch up to get the fish attention and he and Bill he would make about 15 to 16 thousand a year and he sold them to these sporting goods stores in Oak Ridge and he got so good one year, that sometimes he didn’t use the vice. He just wrapped them with his hand like this. Throw it over, get another one. I remember him sitting there in the living room. I had to [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were saying he was sitting there.
MR. STORY: Bare footed with his feet like this in the winter time sitting there by the furnace so back then we got gas by that time and got rid of the coal front. He’d sit there with that hot furnace and my mother was warm natured and Daddy was cold natured and Momma would sit over there with her dish towel, like just trying to hint to him cut that heat off, but he would dye [inaudible] and he got so good at it and put glue on it and all that good pine [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: He’d have to heat the lead up and pour into a mold.
MR. STORY: Right and he would send me to the filling stations on my bicycle to pick up the lead parts that they used for balancing tires and that’s where we got our lead and he made his own mold and the back kitchen and the stove oven used to be back there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That is a no-no today, isn’t it?
MR. STORY: It is a no-no. Let me tell you and all his fishing rods and all. Matter of fact I still got some of his fishing rods and reels and several of his headicaws [ph]. I’ll give you some one day when I get up in the attic.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Way back when the family first come in the streets, you remember a lot of mud and––
MR. STORY: Exactly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No matter where you went, there was a lot of mud?
MR. STORY: There was lots of mud. Matter of fact we used to get way off the roads and walk because it was so muddy. Because you didn’t know red mud would actually stick you in the ground and you’d leave your shoe in there sometimes. We had boardwalks and the boardwalks especially in the spring time, April showers come where we knew that the roads was going to get very––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Dirty?
MR. STORY: The only thing that would go through would be the Army jeeps that patrolled Oak Ridge back at the time. I never will forget them jeeps coming down Broadway with machine guns mounted on the back of them and an Army of men in there. We sometimes would be on the bus and Mother would actually get up when an Army man got on the bus with us three kids and offer that Army serviceman her seat and that’s what you call respect. Mother respected the Armed Forces because our young men, I was just a baby then, was getting killed in World War II and she respected the service. But every time she asked a serviceman to sit down, well, they would refuse her. They said, “No, ma’am. You sit right back down with them kids.” They was very polite.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how the weather was in the winter time when you were growing up here? Was it worse than it is now or––
MR. STORY: Yes, very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of snow?
MR. STORY: Very much so. We’d have 14 to 18 inches of snow and it was cuckoo. Back then, you could make snow ice cream. You can’t now because the pollution is there and that ice cream was very good. Momma would get the snow and we’d eat ice cream, but to play in it, we had to put socks, three or four socks over our shoes to go outside and play and when we’d come in, we’d have to sit by the stove to let the ice thaw off of our socks because they was froze to our clothes, so we didn’t have enough to pull them off. They’d be froze too and so our hands is where they are. Nose is where they are. Ears is where they are. We didn’t have Botox like we do now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have any galoshes?
MR. STORY: I had galoshes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell us what galoshes are.
MR. STORY: Galoshes is a five buckle rubber boot. Galoshes slip over your shoes big enough and they helped a whole lot, but they still got cold but galoshes you could wade through mud with a smile on your face.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the family have a radio?
MR. STORY: Yes, we did. We had a radio up until 1952. Monday night and Sunday night we’d listen to a program called Inner Sanctum which was a scary show. Amos and Andy which was a funny––Daddy always liked Amos and Andy. That Amos and Andy show would come on. That was the time Daddy would pop popcorn and I think it was Monday or Tuesday night and the Wolf Man would come on Sunday nights. Yeah. And Monday nights, we’d listen to the radio and of course, back then, it was like I said a while ago, we was all in bed by 8 or 8:30 and we didn’t have TV until I was 12 years old, in 1952 and then it went off at 6:00. Crusader Rabbit was a cartoon on then and at 6:00, the test pattern would come on the TV and we sat and watch it. I mean we couldn’t believe that something was coming out of that box though. It was a sight to behold.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother ever listen to Queen for a Day? Do you remember that?
MR. STORY: Exactly. Matter of fact I do exercise twice a week now at the hospital. We all started a conversation about Queen for a Day. I think it was Jack King, the host, Queen for a Day. Let’s see, This Is Your Life.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jack Benny?
MR. STORY: Jack Benny and what was this man after him?
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ll think of it, maybe.
MR. STORY: But anyway, Jack Benny was really funny back then and Groucho Marx.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about during the summer time. Did you ever go to the school playgrounds and participate in that––
MR. STORY: Yes, we did. Matter of fact the playground that I went to was over when we went to Glenwood and they had movies every other night. I remember asking Daddy for three cents and it’s the first time my daddy ever turned me down and I didn’t know why. The movie cost three cents. But a lot of the other kids didn’t have three cents either, but they went over there and went in the back way to see the movies, but I didn’t and Daddy turned me down so I didn’t go that night and years later he told me. He said, “That was for my lunch at the plant. Jerry, that’s to pay for my milk and a cookie out of the machine.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have––Did you do any sports when you were growing up? All playing and like that?
MR. STORY: In high school. Well, I went after football and I was in my junior year in Oak Ridge High School but it was when Coach Armstrong was there and I was 87 pounds and the first two days exercise was all right, but that fourth and fifth day, some were 130 pounds and they started using me as a football. I stayed there for about three weeks and I walked off. I quit. I was bruised and hurt. Of course, back then, you didn’t make your buddies see tears come out of your eyes. Boy, it hurt, but I turned my head and didn’t let them see me cry. But I quit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you visit the swimming pool very much?
MR. STORY: I did, once a week during the summer time. We had a good time. I got to the point where I could dive in the swimming pool on the side by the diving board and go all the way around or halfway back under water.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the family have a telephone in those days, in the early days?
MR. STORY: We did later on in 1952.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You had a party line?
MR. STORY: We had a party line. We’d go and talk to somebody. We didn’t know who it was or we’d hear a girl in the background. “I’ll meet you at Jefferson Drug Store in about 10 minutes,” and so we just got on there and talked and we had a party line like you said. A long ring was our ring to answer the phone. Two short rings was the neighbor’s and one ring was another neighbor’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now down in Jefferson, the size of the movie theater, they also had bowling lanes up there, didn’t they?
MR. STORY: Right. It’s called the [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever bowl any in those days?
MR. STORY: No, I just wasn’t interested in it and plus the fact, I didn’t have a whole lot of money to bowl. But some of my buddies worked there, but the bowling pins some of them got their legs busted up pretty bad because they had to raise them legs up and that was back when the Wayne Theater moved in too. The Wayne Theater come in over there and that was a big deal for that end of town and on Saturdays you’d go in there and get you a Coke for five cents and they had five different flavors. A Coke cup would fall down. Boy that was something else watch that cup fall down by itself.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Ice come into the cup?
MR. STORY: Ice come into the cup and we’d get us a suicide. Now a suicide drink is very special. Now they had five flavors. We’d push all five, but we called it a suicide drink. Now all mixed up and you’d go in the Wayne Theater to sit down and your feet was––It’s where the last people who brought their Cokes in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All that going on.
MR. STORY: The sugar and syrup.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type movies do they show at the Wayne Theater?
MR. STORY: Well, they showed the Distant Drums and I worked with it, Distant Drums.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that a Western?
MR. STORY: Yeah, Distant Drums with Gary Cooper and that was such a good movie, I still think of it a lot and of course, they had the cartoons. We had all the cartoons and––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now did you go to the Grove Theater very much?
MR. STORY: No, not really, until I grew up and started dating and then I––
MR. HUNNICUTT: In high school, what type of classes did you take in high school?
MR. STORY: High school? I’d say Biology. Of course, some of the required was English, History, Math, Geometry––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like high school?
MR. STORY: I did, but Geometry, I wasn’t too bright on that. That was a little hard for me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of your teachers’ names, do you remember?
MR. STORY: I had Miss McGee, Mr. Atkins, Mr. Plumlee was my science teacher. Mr. Atkins was my English teacher. They were all good people back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is Mrs. Stansbury there?
MR. STORY: Miss Stansbury. She was my English teacher in my senior year. She was a very good teacher. She was funny, but she was a good––
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was the way she talked, wasn’t it?
MR. STORY: Well, she had false teeth and she had to take her tongue and pushed on the front like this and I don’t mean to make fun of her. I loved her every bit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I had her as well. I remember.
MR. STORY: And she told me one time, she said, “Jerry, you’re a good kid but you’re just going to have to straighten up. You’re going to have to give a book report.” So, I never gave a book report and I was a senior in high school because I still try. So I went over Downtown and I think it was McCrory’s. I went in and bought a comic book on Treasure Island. So I had flipped through that night and got all the basic parts and did you know everybody in that class clapped for me? I was so proud. I was telling them how Captain John had that one leg and told him that he was a sot. I mean I had the class [inaudible]. Made an 80 on it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year did you graduate?
MR. STORY: 1959. It was the last year that the class graduation was made at Oak Ridge High School. After that there was so many, they started having it at Blankenship Field.
MR. HUNNICUTT: During high school, did you date very much?
MR. STORY: No. Even my senior prom year, I went to the church prom down at Robertsville. I didn’t date.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your family had church orientated quite a bit in those days?
MR. STORY: Right. They grew up at Primitive Baptist back in the country.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me earlier about we were talking about alcohol in Oak Ridge.
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you told me a little story about your daddy. You want to tell me about it?
MR. STORY: That’s on Hill Top. Sometimes on Saturday, Daddy put us two boys in the car. Mother never knew where we were going and we finally figured that out like years later, but we’d go up to Hill Top and there was a gate there and the guards knew Daddy personally.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Before you go any further, tell the audience that may review this, where Hill Top was located.
MR. STORY: Hill Top is top of Illinois Avenue going towards Oliver Springs and about a quarter of a mile actually past Hill Top, there was a gate there then and the guards knew my father and knew some other men too and we would go about a quarter of a mile down the road there and they’d be an old gravel road and Daddy would turn right and go down there less than a quarter mile to an old grocery store and he said boys, you all come in, so naturally we would because every time we went, they’d give us licorice or something and it was free. Couldn’t believe anything free and so daddy would go in there and buy a pint of liquor. The man was actually a moonshiner. I mean I hope I don’t get criminal for saying this, but in going there about two or three weeks and get some. We’d go with him because we got that free candy and that same summer, Daddy made homemade brew up in the attic at the TDU house and us boys outside playing sheep and marbles at the end of the house where it was shady in August, and kept hearing something going bloop. What smell was that? Boy, it stinks. What is that? We finally figured out where it was coming from and we told Daddy. “Oh, that’s nothing, boys. Just don’t worry about it.” So Mom and Daddy went shopping or something one afternoon, so us boys said let’s get up in the attic and see what that is. Back then it was just a square hole, so we got ourselves and we found that old brew up there. We was just a boy and there was a cup laying there so we started drinking that stuff and it was hot. Oh, we got dizzy. Oh, boy. Ooh, I fell and skinned my knee. We went out in the shade and just laid down in the grass and we thought we was going to die. I mean, first time tried drinking.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell us how you and Ray got that––
MR. STORY: Red top––About a month later, Daddy bottled it in the kitchen and after that he told us he made it. He’d buy red top. Red top––It was a syrup and yeast and boy it just stunk when making it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Made home brew.
MR. STORY: Made home brew and it was good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did he get the liquor back in through the gate?
MR. STORY: He’d come back the same way he went in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They not search or look for it because they knew him?
MR. STORY: Yeah and I think Daddy would see some of his buddies down there to be with so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, do you remember in 1945 when they dropped the bomb? Do you remember that event?
MR. STORY: Yes, I do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you?
MR. STORY: In 1945, I was 5 years old, but I remember Momma hugging me and shouting. She had the radio on and I remember Momma holding me and swinging me around. It’s over with and so, I really was still too young to realize what was going on, but I could tell it was a happy time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now in March of ’49, they opened the gates to the city. Do you remember that event?
MR. STORY: Yes, I sure do. Matter of fact, we was there. In ’48, down on Warehouse Road, they had the Freedom Train. In ’48, we went to visit the Freedom Train. Do you remember that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, it was on the track right where the steam plant was where Prop’s Hardware and Section Group is today.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. STORY: And it was from Germany. It had a German igloo and why they––We fought the war with Germans, fought against them and I’ve often wondered why the Freedom Train was German. I never did find out, but there was a lot of people that turned out to see that. I’ve got some pictures of the Freedom Train, but I’ve done gave them to the Historical Society.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they gave a little literature out in a book which I’ve got. I don’t remember much about it. But––
MR. STORY: Oh, good. Yeah, I was a little bit young and then so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: When the gates opened though, did you go to the parade?
MR. STORY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you stand to see the parade?
MR. STORY: We stood up at the bus stop at Jackson Square. Mother and Daddy put me on his shoulders and that’s where it was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now that would be on Tennessee Avenue right there across from where the post office used to be?
MR. STORY: Right, used to be. Exactly and the bowling alley was there underneath the Gran Rex Building back behind the Soup Kitchen now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. So, what do you remember who was in the parade?
MR. STORY: That, I think my eyes, me and my brother were picking at each other so I don’t remember a whole lot of that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a lot of people there though?
MR. STORY: A lot of people. It was crowded.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know they had a lot of Hollywood stars that came and Rod Cameron, the––
MR. STORY: Yeah, Rod Cameron. Sure, I do remember Rod Cameron. He was in the movies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now the same weekend on Friday, they opened the museum down at Jefferson in the old cafeteria building. Do you ever go to that American Museum of Atomic Energy there?
MR. STORY: Very often. Because we lived on Jefferson Circle and when we collected arrowheads and pottery at the steam plant where it is now, we donated the stuff that we found and the reason why we found it in the spring time so easy, the farmer where they would plow, they’d plant corn later and he’d let us in there in the summer time, in the spring, after he plowed it, but after he’d plant his seed, we was not allowed in there. We can see why because it would kill his crop and we rode our bicycles to the old white bridge at Edgemore and it was a wooden bridge and you could still––When the cars come across, you could still hear it what we call, there goes the tater wagon across the bridge. When it thunders and lightning, we called it tater wagon because it go click, boom and I think that was a good time. But we rode the bicycles over and find pottery and we didn’t keep them. For some reason, we gave them to the Atomic Museum and they took them. They’d been a lot of work and a lot of money, but like you said, money is not everything in life. But we gave it all to the museum potteries. We found props, arrowheads, different kind of articles.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What all do you remember was in the museum at that time?
MR. STORY: The best part that we remember is making our hair stick up on that electronic ball. You put your hands on that ball and they’d turn the power on and your hair would stick straight up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Van de Graff.
MR. STORY: Is that what it was? And they had a mirror there so you could see it and it was fantastic. Then they showed atoms and they showed Einstein. As you know, I don’t think there’s anybody in this world that don’t know Einstein. He was a very brilliant person. I understand when I watched the History channel about a month ago, they inspected his brain and part of his brain was so much different than the average human that it was unique.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever get a radiated dime at the museum?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They used to radiate dimes.
MR. STORY: I didn’t know that. But we did play with mercury.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you get your mercury?
MR. STORY: At the creek I swam in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You didn’t know that in those days though, did you?
MR. STORY: No. We swam in it, played Mike Fink in it. We’d go down behind Robertsville. That creek come up to my throat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But the mercury was in the thermometers in those days, right?
MR. STORY: Right. We’d bust the thermometers to get it out and roll it in our hands, shine our nickels down with it. Played with it and it was very dangerous. I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled of it or licked it or anything, but––
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think you had to heat it and get the fumes before it bothers you.
MR. STORY: Okay and so, I was told one time if I didn’t glow it, don’t worry about it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, after midnight we do.
MR. STORY: So, I turned out all right in my life.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you graduated from high school, what did you do?
MR. STORY: Well, I was working at the Boy’s Club at the time and A&P Store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was it located?
MR. STORY: A&P Store is where Downtown Hardware was but up on top, next to J. C. Penney.
MR. HUNNICUTT: On the corner there.
MR. STORY: And so at mid-summer, I joined the Army. I went to Basic Training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for eight weeks. Then I was off two weeks for Christmas and I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, Armor Training. I was in tanks and burning crosses broke out and so they froze us, but we can’t train. We kept training because if they needed us, over in Berlin, in case the war broke out again, we’d be ready to be shipped over there. So until this date, I’ve not been past the Mississippi. I thought I’d get to see a little bit of the world if I joined the Army, but I was stuck at Fort Knox 255 miles away from home. But I got a––The military changed my life. It really did. I grew up in a hurry. I had respect for everybody. I just loved my family better.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you came back to Oak Ridge after the Army?
MR. STORY: I came back to Oak Ridge and I stayed here and I never got on to the plant, but I finally went into retailing and worked for a big department store in Oak Ridge and stayed there for 23 years and then after that, I went to Decatur, Tennessee, and run an Ace Hardware Store. Been there for five years and it was 55 miles one way. I’d leave the house at dark and get home dark and I had three kids. Three kids still in school, so I had to do what I had to do to put beans on the table and clothes on their backs and so––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your wife?
MR. STORY: I met her at that department store where we both worked. She’s from Pulaski, Virginia, God’s Country. Rolling hills you wouldn’t believe. You could sit there on her mother’s back porch, out there in the country with a pair of binoculars and see a deer coming 5 miles along the [inaudible]. It kind of reminded you of the picture of the Germany during World War II, [inaudible]. Because there’s several farms up there and most of the farmers were German people and the Civil War was supposed to follow through there too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now what department store did you work at in Oak Ridge?
MR. STORY: It was called Value Mart. Watsons in Oak Ridge had a store on Market Square for years and so they finally put a store in here called the Value Mart. Years later, they changed it to Watsons.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where is that located?
MR. STORY: It was located where the Little Ones used to be, Jackson Square, 125 Broadway. I think Jacobs Engineering was there now and they had upstairs and downstairs which is very unique for a department store and that was before Wal-Marts and K-Marts and we used to have traffic jams up there on Saturdays. I mean we would sell merchandise you wouldn’t believe. We sold a lot of salvage. I’d go buy salvage in Newark, New Jersey, Texas. They’d fly me to Florida and buy stuff that was fire damaged, smoke damaged, water damaged. Sometimes I’d have clothes in on the back of them trucks and the water was just actually bursting out the back of them trailers coming home. But we’d put fans on it and so we’d find our price and gave the customer a real good price and I met a lot of friends and a lot of people in Oak Ridge by working there and I still remember a lot of them and a lot of people would still have some of that merchandise that I used to sell there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now it was later changed to Watsons.
MR. STORY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then did that just kind of bring the items up to a little bit different level or––
MR. STORY: Yeah. Our retail was in between Loveman’s and Belk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now Loveman’s moved downtown and back to the new location.
MR. STORY: Right. So, our retail price was between Loveman’s and J. C. Penney, I think that’s what––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Most people in Oak Ridge remember you from the Value Mart and Watsons for many years and the service that you dedicated to them.
MR. STORY: Yeah. I sure was. Mayor Bissell would come in every once in a while and talk to me, I think.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you lived in a flat top across the street from him up on Meadow Road, didn’t you?
MR. STORY: Yeah. When I was a boy with Keith, his son and so, like I said, I had a good childhood growing up, after the gates, I started to go hunting and fishing with Daddy and it was unreal. One summer by the way, I need to put this in. Wiltshire Drive––We climbed that mountain and we’d walk over across the mountain and to back behind the Garden Apartments. We’d figured out one summer how to get from that top of that mountain to the bottom of that mountain without touching the ground. From tree to tree to grapevine to grapevine and it took a lot of engineering to do that, but we figured it out. I mean that’s all we had to do back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You was the tars in Oak Ridge, wasn’t you?
MR. STORY: I tell you. We’d sleep out in them woods and had us a good time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how many children you have, Jerry.
MR. STORY: I have three beautiful children. My oldest is Felicia Story. I love her to death. I was 10 foot tall when she was born and I still am. She lives here in Oak Ridge. She works at Jefferson Junior High School as a bookkeeper. She works for a real estate company and she’s got a business on her own. My second one, Jerry Brooks Junior, named after me. I was 10 foot tall when he was born. He works in Knox. He oversees the houses being built for Saddlebrook Homes. He is such a fine man. He’s got two of my grandbabies. Then Karrie, my baby, she played basketball at Oak Ridge High School. She got a scholarship to go to Roane State. She blew her knee out the second year, so that took care of that. There were several other colleges looking at her, but that just didn’t happen. I have got an ad in there with Karrie’s picture on it playing basketball and it says unleashed. Karrie works for Oak Ridge Urology. She has two that are my grandbabies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you tell me what your wife’s name was?
MR. STORY: Freeda. Freeda Kathleen, maiden name Quesenberry and we’ve been together this May, 50 years. That means that she’s put up with a lot with me, but I love her to death. She is precious. She is the joy of my life.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when did you retire from working?
MR. STORY: When I retired? About three years ago. I still have a lot of years. I might still go back to work. I’m not one to sit down.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Does your wife work?
MR. STORY: Yes. She stayed home to take care of the kids and they turned out beautiful. We never had one bit of problems out of them. She is a remarkable person. She kept them in line while I was at work. We’re enjoying life with them, my daughters and son and my grandbabies. We’re a very close knit family. Always have been and we always will be. She kept other children in our home. She now keeps our grandchildren after school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve got a couple of places I want to mention. You tell me what you remember about them, The Snow White Drive-In.
MR. STORY: Snow White Drive-In. Man, that was the drive-in. Snow White Drive-In as I remember, the most popular thing at Snow White Drive-In was to see how many times you could go around it in your car on one Saturday night and I mean that’s what we done. You’d [inaudible]. I don’t know [inaudible] I still remember him. He was a beautiful person. He treated everybody the same. It didn’t matter if you was poor, rich or ugly, fat. He treated everybody the same.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Snow White Drive-In located, do you remember?
MR. STORY: The Snow White Drive-In, let’s see now. Back where the bend where close to the hospital and the [inaudible] out there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s about where the entrance of the hospital is, I guess. Isn’t it?
MR. STORY: Yeah and the Chrysler place across the street from where the Chrysler place is now and then the Rabbit Drive-In.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now tell about the Rabbit Drive-In.
MR. STORY: The Rabbit Drive-In was the drive-in. Chopped ham sandwich, oh man. That was good. I always got a chopped ham sandwich and a pineapple milkshake and they’d see me coming. They’d already start making it because that’s what I ordered and they had car hops. The girls would bring it to us in our car.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the lady that used to manage that?
MR. STORY: No, I remember the car hops though.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She had a son named Jack Daily. We called him Jack Rabbit, but she was a short, little skinny lady that we used to call Ma Rabbit.
MR. STORY: Ma Rabbit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She was the, reminded you of the Beverly Hillbillies, Granny.
MR. STORY: Okay. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s who she remind me of.
MR. STORY: Tough.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: Tough.
MR. HUNNICUTT: She really ran that place really good and that’s where everybody used to hang out if you remember.
MR. STORY: How about that? And we did, Halloween night. One time we went and got 18 pumpkins off of porches. We would put them on that brick wall. He kicked the spoon, fold it up, it says Jerry. They knew us by our first name. The police did. “Where did you boys get them pumpkins?” “Off of some porches.” “Take them right back.” We couldn’t figure out where they all went, but we put them in the car.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the Sky Way Drive-In theater?
MR. STORY: The Sky Way Drive-In. We lived on Jefferson Circle then and the Sky Way Drive-In we’d ride our bicycles out there and go in the back and watch a free movie and then one Sunday, Daddy bought me a car for $35.00, had running boards on it. Boy, I wish I still had that car. You could put nine to 10 people in there because in high school, we would have air raids, not fire alarms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Air raid drills?
MR. STORY: Air raid drills. Okay. So, Oak Ridge is bombed. I had 11 people assigned to my car. I was not allowed to go home. I was not allowed to go to the plants where was Daddy was. We was supposed to go to Oneida.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jellico.
MR. STORY: Jellico. We could not go home. We couldn’t––We was instructed to do that and everybody went to the cars that they assigned to you. That car was––looked like a horse. But boy, it burnt oil like crazy. I mean, I put a filling station in that’s a direct filling station in Jersey. Fill it, put oil and check the gas. That was funny.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you could buy Old Buck Oil for a quarter back then.
MR. STORY: Well, we carried a five gallon can in the back. We was going to Clinton one night. Let me tell you. We was going to Clinton one night, way down on Jefferson and we’d go out on the Turnpike in the month of August. The wind wasn’t blowing. I made a trail you wouldn’t believe. Well, Zeek, the police officer pulled me over.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Zeek Campbell.
MR. STORY: Yeah, pulled us over here at Elza Gate to the underpass. Says, “Jerry, where you all going?” “We was going to Clinton.” “You ain’t going to make it. Look at the smoke behind you.” He said, “You get right back home right now.” Well, we filled it up with oil again and went back down the Turnpike and then when we come down the Turnpike, the oil burning thing was still there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The smoke was still there?
MR. STORY: And we made another smoke train all the way home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were spraying for mosquitoes is what you’re doing, wasn’t you?
MR. STORY: It just lingered. Everybody was laughing before that. We said we wasn’t mean. We was just mischief and another thing I need to bring up, we used to catch flying squirrels on Louisiana Avenue. Pets would––We’d actually put them in our house until Momma found out and we’d keep them in pillowcases that we found. Momma found out one time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A squirrel in a pillowcase?
MR. STORY: And so and after Boy Scouts, see, I was a good boy, but I was mischief and we’d go to Louisiana Avenue, put those kudzu vines on us and walked down the middle of the street. Cars would slam on their brakes and we’d tie hub caps to the string and throw it out there, run. Cars would stop and get out and look and we’d pull and make a little noise and they’d go up and look at it and they reach over and pick it up. We’d pull it and take off and we’re just shaking. So, Detective [inaudible] caught us that night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: See, in those days, fun was fun. It wasn’t––
MR. STORY: Until it was stump dump.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, tell me about where the stump dump was.
MR. STORY: The stump dump is up there top of Louisiana Avenue. That is four houses built back in there. That’s where people went to park.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Went on their afternoon.
MR. STORY: They went Thursday and smooched in, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh. Ooh.
MR. STORY: That’s what I said. So after Scouts one night, we slipped up there and peeled a potato and put in the exhaust pipe and we backed off and see everybody, all the stores back then was closed by 5:30, 6:00 and it was quiet up there and the Turnpike’s a long ways from there, okay? That guy started the car and it went grrr, third time, grrr, caboom. Blowed a hole in the muffler. That car, brrr, he rode, went there and looked out. It was one piece of ride. And he went down Louisiana, brrr, got on the Turnpike way down there. He heard him all the way up to the stump dump. Grrr and we’d be hearing him put his brakes on the stump pots, brrr. And see, we wasn’t mean. We was just mischief.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The policemen back in those days pretty much knew all of the boys and––
MR. STORY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And they didn’t allow loud mufflers in those days, did they?
MR. STORY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: So, but they picked him up. But anyway, that was a very good growing up I had and we all had fun. We didn’t do destructive set up. We just down to earth little boys. We just had a good time. Matter of fact we still talk about it. Me and my buddies and like I said, I’m getting to the age now where I’m enjoying it better and I tell my boys when we went to the high school reunion three years ago, I told them, “Boys,” I said, “Boys, you know, we used to be pretty, what happened?” And back then we’d camp out in the yard and all that good––Back then you could look up in the sky and see shooting stars and you could see the Milky Way. You couldn’t do that now. It’s too much pollution around here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We could spend all day talking about early days in Oak Ridge.
MR. STORY: Amen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was such a safe place to live.
MR. STORY: Exactly, but we were poor and didn’t know it. Like I said, I seen Momma take scraps and we made it. We managed. Everybody––
MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody seemed to help each other.
MR. STORY: Everybody helped each other. If you needed help, boy, those neighbors got there on the spot. Or if they needed any help, we were right there on the spot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you can think of?
MR. STORY: Not that I know of except the pontoon bridge out by where the dam is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, White Wing Bridge?
MR. STORY: White Wing Bridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the White Wing Bridge.
MR. STORY: The White Wing Bridge out there we used to go out there and throw rocks at cars. They’d come up next to the lights and we’d touch snag it with the hooks. Never did catch one, but we had fun doing it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now that was a popular fishing spot at night off the bridge, wasn’t it?
MR. STORY: It was, had lanterns out there. Fishing people catch fish and they asked us boys, do you all want these fish? Catfish, crawfish, no, we don’t want them. So we just go back home and the draw bridge would float up when the water go and float back down. It was a very unique smart move to make a bridge and it was a military bridge because when Colonel Grove come in here, they said when he talked, you listened. He got the job done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Exactly. Jerry, how do you see the city as progressed over the years that you’ve been here?
MR. STORY: I’ve seen the city grow a little bit and I have seen the city improve itself. As people change positions at the city of Oak Ridge, there is more and more educated people than there used to be and they were very elite people. I think of them doing a very good job, seem to me. I don’t know the back door stuff or the front door stuff either as far as that goes, but I do know that it is improving because you have all the updates in this Oak Ridge area. Now there are some bad sites and there are some good sites.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you think the most amazing thing you’d ever seen in your life?
MR. STORY: Amazing thing?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. STORY: Miracle. When I worked in Decatur, Tennessee, I’d seen a miracle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was that?
MR. STORY: I was––I drove down there 55 miles one way. Let me tell you. That sun hit my face in the morning going west and I seen a miracle. I seen my mother walking behind me in my car on Highway 58 and behind my mother, there was an angel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That is a miracle.
MR. STORY: That is a miracle and to this date, I go back every July 4th and sit at the cemetery and talk to my mother and daddy and my buddies. Some of us you couldn’t talk to anybody dead. I said I do. Sure do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, this is just a little bit of your experience living in Oak Ridge.
MR. STORY: Exactly. I got a lot more.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But what an experience. If you hadn’t lived in Oak Ridge, you can’t understand how it was. It really was quite unique than anywhere else.
MR. STORY: Right. It was very different because we had three fences around us. We couldn’t leave and we was poor and didn’t know it, but we appreciated what we did have. We didn’t know we was poor.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s certainly been my pleasure to interview you and––
MR. STORY: Hey, read this.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview undoubtedly will certainly give someone an overview of how it was in those days and––
MR. STORY: But it was pretty good and like I said, Dave, the interview and I have books which I’ve got, tapes and books, the history of Oak Ridge, but what did us children do growing up here and we done with what we had. We didn’t go buy stuff because we couldn’t afford it. If we couldn’t figure it out, then we’d go buy a tool. But we always tried to figure it out because my father taught me that. Figure it out, Jerry. Don’t do it right now. Find somebody that what can you do it and help you do it without a tool. If you can’t, well then go get it and if you don’t have cash for it, don’t buy it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, it’s been a real pleasure for me to interview you.
MR. STORY: Hey.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’ve learned things that I didn’t know and I’ve been here all my life too. But Oak Ridge is just a unique place.
MR. STORY: Very much so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And I thank you very much for letting us come into your home.
MR. STORY: Hey.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And take this time to do it.
MR. STORY: Hey, you’re all welcome here anytime. But remember this. Come in the back door. My friends come in the back door. They leave in the back door and I promise you if you’re hungry, you won’t leave hungry.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Thank you, Jerry.
MR. STORY: You’re welcome. You all want something to eat?
[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this interview were edited at Mr. Story’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]